


He wears commitment like a coat of arms (a fragile weight for him to bear)

by arthurandhisswordbros



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst in all forms, Arthur has magic, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Reincarnation, The Author Regrets Nothing, University, University Hospital, basically everyone is reincarnated except for arthur, for now, freshly-washed-up-from-the-lake!arthur, preslash, pseudo medical realism, reincarnated!Merlin, tags will be added as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthurandhisswordbros/pseuds/arthurandhisswordbros
Summary: In which Arthur washes up from the shores of Avalon without his (and our) favorite sorcerer waiting for him. How will he adapt to a world that has left him behind for over a thousand years, as well as attempt to find some semblance of his past within it? Well, Arthur doesn't know it yet, but it might not be as difficult as he thinks.Spoilers in the tags!





	1. Oh we're in it now, Arthur Pendragon.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Bayonne," by Little Comets  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k8p3E7JolY

Arthur wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be like to die. Well, he had an idea.

Naturally, it came along with his line of work.

Being a prince all by itself was dangerous. Upgrading to being both a head knight and glorious king just brought about a ridiculous amount of danger, to the point of it being almost comical. Well, it _was_ a bit comical in retrospect. Especially now that he knows that Merlin has magic, especially now that he’s on his last legs, both figuratively and literally, and especially now that said last legs can’t walk anymore. So he’s forced to rely on Merlin throughout this journey to his death. It seems he’s been doing a lot of that over the past ten years anyway. He should probably be used to it by now.

So, you see it _is_ quite comical. Ironic, too. Comically ironic. And if he’s really reflecting, he’s more mad at himself for not figuring it out than he is mad at Merlin. Well, no, he’s more mad at Merlin for lying to him than he is for Merlin actually having magic. He is equal parts mad at himself and mad at Merlin regarding this whole situation, which is quite fitting considering the pattern that their relationship has taken over the past _ten years._  

Gods, all of that time and he never knew.

He had an inkling, though. He knew that there was something different about Merlin, something that would drive him into the fray of battle, even at its worst. Something that kept him at Arthur's side, too, no matter what dangers lie ahead, and admittedly, no matter how much of a royal prat Arthur could be.

He just thought it was loyalty…and perhaps a bit of madness.

As they journey on into the last of Arthur’s days, he realizes that while Merlin may be a magic user, he _is_ , in fact, both extremely loyal and mad. Just not in the way that Arthur had expected. How else would he have to be to stay in Camelot for so long, even with the laws in place which would guarantee his death?

As Arthur sullies his last breaths, he begins to realize that he may now know what dying feels like, but he will never know who Merlin truly is—who he was, what he did, and what he was capable of. He leaves Merlin with this last thought:

_I don’t want you to change. I want you to always be you._

Merlin looks so brilliantly touched when he says it, too. Good, he hopes its enough. Enough to settle the past ten years, the present time left, and the future without him. When time swallows him up and all that he was—even in his full glory—ends, he still hopes that it’s enough.

Except, endings are supposed to mean something, aren’t they?

They’re supposed to mean new beginnings.

\---

There’s a blinding, white light that sears through him. Something that he can feel through every fiber of his being, every fiber of his soul. It passes through him without so much as a hello and goodbye, catching on his rib cage, solidifying, and brightening, burning itself into his bones like a brand. Just as he begins to feel it start to cool, he wakes up.

The next thing he registers when he comes to is releasing an unholy amount of lake water from his every facial orifice. Seriously, his nose, his mouth—he’s even crying tears of lake water.

It's more water expulsion than the time Leon thought he found the fountain of youth and drank twelve full tankards of some dirty bath water. Arthur had never seen anything like it. It was almost like the water just didn’t want to be inside of Leon—it came out faster than he could drink it. Arthur found it to be extremely entertaining and was very vocal about it.

Arthur supposes that this is some sort of justice that the universe has imposed upon him, if this lake water exorcising process is anything to go on.

He passes out a few moments later, but not before vaguely registering a voice coming from his left side. It’s a bit difficult to hear with gods-know-what in his ears, but once he focuses on it, he can hear it clearly enough.

“Don’t worry,” the voice says, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

From what he can make out, the voice sounds hopeful and assured—bright, even. It feels a bit odd considering the situation at hand, yet it’s still enough to soothe Arthur into a steadier frame of mind as he drifts back off with a firm hand on his back and a calming voice in his ear. He follows it back into the darkness.

\---

Arthur’s laying on a cloud, and his eyes burn even though they are closed. Its one of the more disorienting experiences he thinks he’s had, even more so than that time he fought a dragon. He thought he won but it turned out that Merlin just…wait.

_Merlin_

Only then does it rush back to him. The journey. The Pain. _The dying._

He cautiously moves his body slightly, trying to gauge how bad his stab wound is, but is met with a bit of resistance. He tries to open his eyes against the burning sensation to see what’s holding him, but it’s almost impossible.

Where is he? And where is Merlin?

He tries to move his entire body this time, only to realize that he’s tied down by three strong, yet soft chains going across his chest, hips, and legs. Panic fills him with dread, and he can feel as his heartbeat grows to the point of it practically being deafening. Alone with the increasing pain from his movements, it only serves to isolate him further into his own terror and his mind begins to retreat within itself. He’s alone, he doesn’t know where he is, and he’s completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever has him strapped down.

His body continues to move, only this time without his permission, doing everything in its power to escape, to get him out of there, to find Merlin. Everything around him feels as though its shaking and he finally starts to think he’s going to get free when he’s met with a sudden force.

It takes him a moment to realize that someone is holding him down and in the blink of an eye, multiple people have him trapped even more, hands lining the length of his body and others tightening whatever is binding him to the point of what feels like suffocation.

“He’s convulsing again, someone get me twenty milligrams of diazepam,” a voice—female—yells into the void surrounding them. The voice is unfamiliar to Arthur, as are the words spoken. A few moments later, Arthur feels his left arm go cold. It’s only then that he realizes that there’s something hugging the crook of his elbow, with an incredibly long, thin tail hanging off of it. He ponders what kind of creature makes one’s arm go cold when he begins to feel his body relax. The hands on his arms and legs lessen as well, leaving only one pair. It is only then that he is able to focus on his surroundings just to find a host of strange sounds, strange voices, and even stranger words. He tries to open his eyes again to no luck. Whatever the beast on his arm is, it doesn’t take away the bright lights.

“Excuse me, sir,” a different woman says from his side, also unfamiliar. Her voice is much softer than the other woman’s. It must belong to the hands that still remain on his other, beast-less arm. Presumably now that his body has relaxed, the hands have gotten soft, nowhere near restrictive as they had been a few moments ago. The voice continues. “Sir, can you open your eyes for me?”

He attempts to reply but his mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with hay and his throat feels coarse like sand. He tries to generate enough saliva in his mouth to relieve this, but only to no avail. Thankfully, the woman seems to notice and gives him a sip of water out of a strange feeling cup. It doesn’t entirely relieve the stiffness of his throat but it’s enough to let him get a few words out.

“I cannot,” he replies once he finally gets his bearings, voice coming out scratchy, “Too bright.”

“Okay, let me get the lights then.” He doesn’t know what this means, but she leaves his side and suddenly the burning in his eyes cools over into a mild sting. “Is that all right?”

He nods. She covers his body with something—a thin blanket? He’s feeling supernaturally calm at this point. Normally, it would put him on edge, but the cloud he’s lying on is so soft and the beast on his arm is making him float. The woman brushes some of the hair out of his face. He feels safe.

He knows it’s false, but he can’t help but feel it. His breathing slows and he begins to drift off.

“The drugs should be kicking in,” the woman says, pulling him briefly out of his stupor, “Before you fall back asleep, can you tell me your name?”

“Arthur,” he answers, not caring about the possible repercussions. If he’s in the company of any possible enemies, letting on to the fact that he is a king isn’t in the best course of action. He continues though, regrettably, “Arthur Pendragon.”

She lets out a bit of a chuckle, as though she’s dismissing him. He doesn’t know why. Arthur Pendragon is an honorable name; the name of a king. Doesn’t she know about him?

“Okay, Arthur Pendragon,” she responds, “once you wake up, we’ll get you all sorted out.”

“What’s your name?” he questions, already fading away.

“Freya,” she responds. He barely hears her, but it eventually registers through his sleep addled brain enough for him to carry it with him to wherever he’s going to next.

\---

His consciousness comes and goes from then on out. Sometimes he wakes up and Freya is there, sometimes it’s another woman—someone who is extremely clumsy and spills water on the both of them on more than one occasion. She never provides her name, nor anything but apologies and claims that she’s usually not like this; she’s just having a bad day. He isn’t sure how long he’s like that for, only knows that he sees—or, rather hears—Freya twice and the other woman once.

As soon as he finally gains the ability to stay awake for more than what he estimates is about ten minutes, he starts to strategize. First, though, he realizes that he is no longer strapped down, which is most likely irrelevant, anyways. Brute force obviously won’t get him out of this situation, and he’s too weak to fight anyways; he doesn’t know where he is, he’s still recovering from his stab wound, and he’s pretty much blind at this point—although, the burning sensation in his eyes has lessened tremendously. His only means for survival is his ability to think this out—to negotiate and play the long game if he has to. Or, at least, until he can see again. He just hopes that Merlin is okay. Greatest sorcerer alive or not, he can be a bit of an imbecile.

He listens to Freya—he can tell by her steady, even steps—enter the room again, making note of the direction she’s coming from to gauge where the exit may be. He tries to keep his breathing even to feign sleep, but without his permission, his breath hitches when he feels cold metal touch his chest.

“So, you _are_ awake,” she states, lifting the cold metal from his skin. He can hear the grin in her voice. “What, are you scared of me?”

“No,” he replies a bit too quickly. “What could I be scared of? I’m a king.”

Freya goes stiff for a second. Pauses, then relaxes.

“Oh, because you’re King Arthur, right?”

“King of all of Albion, obviously,” he assures her, smiling. He’s not ashamed to say how proud of himself he is. He’s a really good king in his opinion.

He hears her chuckle. “Hold still for a few minutes for me and just breathe, your highness,” she says.

She places the cold metal down on his chest in various places, putting it away she apparently has what she needs. Then she moves to his other side and wraps something around his free arm. Another beast? A few moments later and he feels it squeeze his arm tightly. He almost startles but remembers that he just said that he was unafraid. His expression must give him away, though.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “It’s just a blood pressure cuff.”

“And what does that do?” he asks, keeping his voice even, casual. He’s just inquiring, after all. He’s not even vaguely scared. Not a bit. Kings aren’t scared of animals. Well, except for unicorns, after that one incident.

“Specifically?” she asks rhetorically, “It has to do with the pressure in your arteries in relation to your heart contracting and relaxing.”

“Oh,” he says.

She laughs, recognizing it as confusion. “Basically, it tells us how hard your heart is working to pump blood to the rest of your body,” she says. The “cuff” starts to release its grip until its loose and hanging off of his arm—this place, wherever he is, is quite strange. It must be some sort of place of healing—one that definitely uses curative magic—which doesn’t eliminate the threat but does make things a bit safer for now. “Yours looks to be good, if slightly elevated. Your heart rate is a bit high, as well, but it makes sense, considering what you went through…”

“The stab wound,” he finishes for her. He can still feel little twinges of pain in his stomach. He should probably feel concerned that he’s not in downright agony, but his arm is still cold, so he figures that the creature is taking care of it.

She takes the contraption off of his arm and presumably puts it away. “And the fact that you were pulled out of the lake. Apparently, you were in there for so long that you had to evacuate all of the water from your lungs, just like a newborn.”

Arthur finds that he doesn’t like being compared to a newborn in any capacity, but he doesn’t voice these concerns. He has more important things to focus on, like internally mapping this new, potential battlefield.

Freya goes to where his feet are, pulls back the covers, and grips each of his ankles.

“Just checking for swelling,” she says when he tenses up. He nods in return. Swelling is never good; he knows _that_.

“So, where am I now?” he inquires.

“You’re at Mountainside General,” she says, “You’ve been here for about a day and a half.”

“And where is Mountainside General?” he responds, still not understanding. It doesn’t sound familiar to him. “I haven’t heard of a Mountainside General throughout all of Albion.”

She stills. Suddenly the room feels stiff and awkward, like its lost one fourth air and they’re both just barely struggling to breathe.

“Arthur, we said that when you’re awake enough, we’d get you sorted out, right?”

“Yes,” he says, letting his previous question go for the time being.

“If you want to do that now, we have to talk about this King Arthur business.” she says slowly, “And it is imperative to me to know what…what you mean by it, I guess.” She sounds a bit off, like she’s questioning her every word. She sounds like she’s being cautious.

“Mean by it?” he asks, confused. What else is there to mean by?

“Like, do you…feel…that you really are…King Arthur?”

“I am,” he states without hesitation. Who else would he be?

As soon as he says it, he can feel the mood shift from increasingly awkward to almost dangerous. Whatever he just implied, it's going to have repercussions.

It’s silent for a touch too long, so he dares to open his eyes into a squint. It burns a bit, but it’s doable. All he sees, though, are a stiff two hands on the side of what appears to be a weird bed that he’s lying on. So not a cloud. Interesting. He raises his head just a little bit to make out Freya’s expression, but can only keep his eyes open long enough to glimpse her face.

She’s younger than he expected. He figured that with her brand of kind caretaker-type behavior, she would be a bit older than him, but no, she’s most likely younger. She’s a lot like Gwen in her demeanor, too.

And no, he doesn’t want to think about Gwen at this moment. Gods know what she’s going through right now with him and Merlin missing, especially after the big battle.

“Arthur,” Freya breaks the silence, her voice coming in clearer—more professional, “I am going to go get the doctor. I’ll be right back. Do you think you can stay awake long enough to wait?”

Get a doctor? He thought that Freya was the physician, like Gaius. Unless she’s an apprentice like Merlin. It would make sense considering how young she looks.

“Yeah,” he says hesitantly, uncertainty coloring every syllable. If she is going to get a Gaius-like person, then maybe they could answer his questions. That would be good. Although, as he hears Freya leave the vicinity, he still can’t shake the feeling that this is going to be very, very bad for him.

\---

And it is, because after that it is a parade of strangers coming in. The doctor—the shouting woman from before—and a man with a kind voice who asks Arthur about his name, where he’s from, and a few other semi-invasive questions. Another man comes in to look at his eyes, tell him how strange they are—which Arthur does not appreciate—and to tell him that he’ll have to wear “sun glasses,” whatever that means. At the tail end of it all, he’s so exhausted and annoyed that he immediately falls back asleep mostly out of genuine fatigue, but also a little bit of spite. Okay, mostly out of spite, but he is pretty tired, too. Once he’s awake, he thinks he can overhear Freya speaking with the clumsy woman. They must alternate shifts watching over him.

“They couldn’t match his prints to any database, and no one has come looking for him yet,” she whispers, or at least thinks she’s whispering, “and he seems to have no idea where he is, what year it is, and that he’s not the mighty King Arthur, himself.”

But he is the mighty King Arthur. And Merlin should have come looking for him—unless he’s injured too. No, wait, he wasn’t injured when Arthur almost died and he’s a powerful sorcerer; Merlin knows how to defend himself, right? He couldn’t have gotten hurt, right? He couldn’t have been killed, right? It’s all too much for him. With how weak he is right now and the implication of Merlin not being in sight—with almost nothing in sight that feels, sounds, or looks familiar, it’s _too much for him_. He finally snaps.

“Where’s Merlin?” he asks. There’s no room for debate in his tone. He’s led armies with his voice; led a nation with his words.

“The magical wizard?” the clumsy woman blurts out. She seems to regret it as soon as it leaves her mouth. Good. She should.

She just let him know that they _do_ have him. How else would they have known?

“How did you know he’s a wizard?” he’s really starting to panic. “Where is he?” He’s shouting now, using all of the strength he can muster to get into an upright position. He feels a hand on his arm trying to keep him down—Freya—but it’s useless.

He opens his eyes, not caring about the burning sensation. He has to find Merlin and he’s not playing games this time. He’s not laying back to strategize or scope out the area. And there are no drugs to keep him calm, anymore. He’s done with this.

“Where is he?” he’s practically screaming. He doesn’t have the time to take in the strange room when he shakes Freya off. He pulls the thing from his arm—not a creature after all, but a strange device—once he sees that it’s connected to another larger device and attempts to stand up on the other side of the bed. He’s still pain free from whatever drugs the device gave him, but he’s a bit unsteady. Freya races to the other side of the bed and puts her hands on each of his shoulders.

“Please, Arthur, I don’t know where Merlin is, but if you get out of this bed and continue to scream, they’ll have to restrain you again,” she sounds desperate. He shakes her off and attempts to put one foot in front of the other.

“I can take them,” he says, “So let me go, now.”

When he says this, Freya’s face goes from a potent mix of fear and worry to another mix of fear and shock. Terror, maybe. She looks behind him, all around the room and then directly into his eyes.  

He’s so angry and worried and scared that it takes him a minute to realize that the room is shaking. Is Merlin doing this? Is he here?

“What are you?” Freya asks, voice trembling just slightly.

Is it him? No, it can’t be. He doesn’t have magic.

The room around them throbs, little strange devices rattling in their places on the walls and shelves. The floor gets to be so unsteady that Arthur falls backwards back onto the bed.

As he looks up, he watches the world pulse to the rhythm of his breathing.

Does he have magic?

A nurse runs in after that and he feels a sharp sting in his arm. The last thing he sees as he blacks out is Freya’s face, with an unreadable expression coloring it.


	2. Trapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely simthemuse! Go visit her ao3 and tumblr (@ninjahijabimuse) because they're both amazing!

For the first time since Arthur has arrived at…wherever he is, he dreams.

He’s laying down by a body of water—perhaps the lake he woke up by, only he can’t move. He can’t open his eyes, nor move his head. He doesn’t really even know if he’s breathing. All he can do is feel the dirt underneath his back, feel the edge of the water caress his skin as it drags itself across the ground beside him, light as a feather. It’s calming, to a certain extent. He doesn’t feel like he’s in pain. He doesn’t feel like he’s struggling to catch every breath. He’s just stagnant, unmoving. He doesn’t have a worry in the world.

The sun’s rays cradle him in cozy warmth—and he somehow gets the impression that he hasn’t felt warmth like this in a long, long time.

That is, until he feels heavy movement in the earth under him, rumbling and vibrating. Soggy dirt is kicked up unto his stomach, and shadows cover him, making him feel cold again.

Again? Why was he so cold before?

A distorted voice rings in beside him, reverberating all around until it completely perforates what was left of the hazy comfort he had just known seconds ago, waking a violent cough that rises in his chest.

Is it the voice from before? How did he get here?

Where  _ is _ he?

The voice finally reaches his ears fully. It’s soft and sweet and it pacifies him, thereby making all of the questions he has feel like they don’t need to be answered just yet. Everything is going to be okay.

Before he can even question this, he wakes up.

\---

When he wakes up this time, it’s different. It  _ feels _ different.

He’s more prepared for it, he thinks—more prepared to be confused and in a little bit of pain. So, when he comes to, he doesn’t startle. He feels almost calm, despite everything in his mind telling him not to be. Maybe it’s a leftover feeling from the dream he just had. Maybe it’s the “drugs.” The medicines which aren’t very medicinal.

Whatever it is, Arthur decides to capitalize on it and take stock of the situation he’s in. While he does this, he doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes—even though the burning sensation has lessened quite a bit—and breathes slowly. He figures that pretending to sleep is his best option, right now. It’s the only way to get the layout of the new room without being interrupted.

First, he decides to check the status of his body. He appears to be bound again with the three chains from before, as well as with new soft, thick ropes tightly fastened to each of his arms and each of his ankles.  

He faintly registers something hugging the crook of his elbow on his right side, rather than his left. They must have moved the device. That cold feeling from before is crawling its way up his arm, so there must be some drug that is keeping him calm. It’s definitely keeping him pain free, which is a plus. If he’s going to get out of here relatively soon, he needs it to last for as long as possible.

But, after what happened last time, Arthur realizes that he needs to really think this out before doing anything. He needs to be smart about this, especially with Merlin’s life being potentially on the line, as well as his own. He can’t go crazy this time; he needs to remain calm. And the magic thing…

Well, Arthur just doesn’t know how to feel about the magic thing. He’s not entirely certain that it actually happened. Maybe it was just a dream.

Yeah, it probably didn’t happen. Right?

He resolves to live in denial for just a few more moments, literally counting the seconds of ignorant bliss in his head, before deciding to address the magic thing later. He’s reluctant to admit it scares him to even think about.

Why does he have it? Why now? And why was it so…powerful?

He can still remember the look on Freya’s face when it happened—a look of abject terror. She asked him what he was. Not “who”, but “what.”

Never mind, he can’t linger on this right now. Time is of the essence.

Deciding to put the subject off until later, he compartmentalizes his brain, shoving all unnecessary thoughts into a corner to be rediscovered later. He’ll think about it when he has time to, when it’s necessary, and when he’s free. 

Once he completely regains his mental faculties, shrugging off the fog of sleep entirely, as well as any remaining thoughts of…that which will be handled later, he sets his mind and ears to focus, to really pick up what’s going on in the room. It’s immediately apparent to him that it’s different from the last one. They’re both loud in the same way—people talking, strange noises that sound off every few seconds—but there’s a distortion to it here. They must not have been in a full room before, but now they are. There are definitely walls blocking off the sound. A door too.  

Aside from that, once Arthur adjusts his ears to the noise from outside, he thinks he can make out the sounds of breathing within the room. Two sets, other than his own—one close to his bed on the left and another further away on the right, also distorted, but not to the degree that the other sounds are. The latter sounds a bit heavy to his ears, like whoever it belongs to is afraid. That’s not the best sign.   

Arthur listens further to hear the sounds of what he attributes to be the device attached to his arm—he remembers hearing it in the room from before. He hears two sets, to be exact, both thrumming to the tune of each other.

Someone else must be getting treatment here as well. Maybe they’re also being held captive here. Maybe they can help him.

He doesn’t get his hopes up in thinking that it could be Merlin. He can’t afford to do that right now. Plus, that’s not how he’s approaching this. He’s investigating—being analytical. That’s the only thing that will save him in this instance. And Merlin, too.

Arthur spares a glance towards where the closest set of breathing is coming from, opening his left eye to watch through his lashes. It burns a bit, again, but is still doable. The person in front of him is sitting in a seat angled towards the bed. They’re exhibiting the posture of one of the castle dungeon’s cell guards—bored and annoyed. They look like they’re the one being kept prisoner here, rather than Arthur.

He opens right eye in the same fashion as the left to gauge where the other source of breathing is coming from, only to be met with a large curtain. He can just make out the silhouette of the figure on the other side, though, who’s presumably being cast by the light from a nearby window…

A window.

That could be useful, depending on how high up he is, especially if it’s not boarded up in any way. Arthur realizes that it probably is, considering the state he’s in right now—that is, bound to all hell.

With a new plan set in mind, Arthur opens his eyes fully. He gets a few more moments to take in the man in front’s appearance before he notices that Arthur is awake. He’s dressed a lot like Freya—at least, from what he can remember Freya being dressed like. He looks a little less professional, though, like he’s new to the job—whatever it is that these people do. Arthur is more and more unsure about it as time goes on. 

Once the man catches on to the fact that Arthur is awake, his posture changes. He sits upright and his face lights up, like something exciting is finally happening. Perhaps it is.

“Oh, you’re awake,” the man says in an excited tone, “You gave us quite the scare. How are you feeling?” The man then stands up, fishes something out of his pocket, and puts it on Arthur’s face.

Darkness pours over his vision, filling it with a black, clear tint. It immediately concerns him, but his eyes don’t burn anymore, and he realizes that he is more able to focus on his surroundings now—he can somehow see clearer, despite the fact that it looks like the sun has suddenly set around him. Oh, these must be the “sun glasses.” Arthur finds the name to be apt.

He finally takes in the room and almost balks at the oddity of it. The walls are the whitest he’s ever seen—even with the dark tint—as well as the smoothest. The floor is just the same, the quality so clear that it’s like looking into a clean river, lights reflecting back from their places in the ceiling. This could almost be comparable to the castle, only it has no adornment to it. Nothing to signify where he is, or what kingdom this is under. Everything is just…blank. It’s like he’s supposed to get lost in the emptiness of it, never to return.

“Sir?” the man questions. Arthur promptly shakes himself out of his thoughts to answer.

“Water,” he croaks, pretending to be thirsty. He actually is, but he plays it up to an almost embarrassing degree.

“Right!” the man responds, a bit clumsy. He gets up and walks over to a device that looks like the spigots that provide water to the citizens of Camelot and—yeah that’s basically what it is. Only, how they got it indoors like this is beyond Arthur. He just chalks it up to another form of magic that they use here, just like the device on his arm and however they were able to get the lights in the ceiling without burning the building down.

The man fills the cup with water. Damnit. Arthur was hoping to get him out of the room.

The man returns and holds the cup while Arthur sips. Arthur can’t help but throw a resentful glare towards him. Now, he has to think of something else.

“Are you in pain?” the man says, giving him an empathetic look. He must have taken the glare as discomfort. “Do you want me to go get your doctor?"

Well, that could work.

Arthur nods, making sure to wince after he does. He can totally be in pain, if it gets this man out of here.

“I’ll go get them,” the man confirms. Arthur thanks him and the man nods in response. Once he leaves, Arthur can hear a click on the other side of the door. Right, of course they would lock it. It doesn’t matter anyway; that’s not what he’s after right now. Plus, if he tried to bust out again, who knows where he’d turn up next—he’d probably wake up in solitude. So, he has to make the best with what he’s got.

“Hey,” he whisper-calls out to the figure on the other side of the curtain.

No response.

“Hey, you,” Arthur calls out again, a little bit louder this time. He hears a deep inhale of breath and then a shudder. He must have woken the other person up and not kindly. Arthur feels bad about it for a fraction of a second, but then pushes forward. “Hey, what’s your name?”

Arthur waits a few moments longer for a response, of which he still gets none.  

“Fine, I don’t need to know your name.” Arthur sighs, “But if we’re going to get out of here, we need to work together.

“Work together?” the voice responds, very obviously male and very obviously young, “You’re crazy. Well, so am I apparently, which is why we’re stuck here, I guess…”

“Don’t call me crazy. And where  _ is _ here?” Arthur says. It wasn’t exactly his first question—he was thinking more along the lines of exits and ideas of people who he may have to fight, but he can roll with this, especially if it gets the kid talking.

“Mountainside Ge—"

“I know we’re in Mountainside General, whatever that is, but where are we, specifically?”

“We’re in the intensive care unit,” the boy answers easily.

“And what’s that?” Arthur inquires. The boy sighs, so put upon. Doesn’t he want to get out of here? Why isn’t he helping?

“It’s a place where people go after they have had surgery and are in need of critical care,” the boy explains. Arthur doesn’t really like his tone, but he parses the boy’s words out for what he’s really trying to say.

Arthur must be here to recover from the stab wound. But why are they keeping him here, with no word as to why, and why would they heal him if he’s their enemy? What do they want from him? They’re even pretending that they don’t know who he is, pretending like he’s some village idiot.

“Why are they keeping us here?” Arthur asks, pressing further.

“In this room, specifically? I think it’s where they put people who they deem a danger to others or themselves but are too injured to be transferred anywhere. So, they’ll keep us here until we’re better and then ship us off to an institution, or a prison or something.”

“An institution?”

“Like a psychiatric facility. A mental hospital.”

“Mental?” Arthur practically guffaws, “They think I’m crazy? I’m a king. I wouldn’t be able to lead an entire kingdom—successfully, I’ll have you—if I were crazy.”

“You’ve led a kingdom?” the boy sounds incredulous.

“I am  _ currently _ leading the kingdom of Camelot,” Arthur states proudly.

“Uh huh,”

“I’m not crazy,”

“Sure,” the boy draws out the ending of the word, still sounding entirely unconvinced. Arthur thinks that he can also hear a smile in the boy’s voice. Arthur almost smiles himself, before quickly thinking better of it. Remembering the task at hand, he presses on.

“Either way,” Arthur looks towards the door—no one seems to be coming, “We need to get out of here. Someone that I—someone that I care about could be in trouble, and I need to save them. So, can you help me?”

“Listen, guy,” the disrespectful boy says—Arthur just told him that he was a king, “You need to give up on all of that. There’s no way out.”

Arthur is beginning to lose his patience. Normally, he wouldn’t—he likes to think that he’s generally calm-headed (even if it’s probably not very true), only, he’s beginning to feel more and more boxed in by the second. Being here, so far away from anything he’s familiar with—especially with the possibility of Merlin being in the same situation, or worse, injured or dead—he’s beginning to feel like this is worse than actually dying.

“Don’t you have someone you care about, that you would do anything to save?” Arthur asks.

The boy is quiet. Arthur takes that as a yes. He begins to hear footsteps approach the door.

“You do,” Arthur says, “So why don’t you want to get out of here, to go find them?”

The boy still remains quiet and for long enough that Arthur stops expecting an answer.

The doorknob begins to turn.

“I told you,” the boy finally answers, “there’s no way out.”

Arthur isn’t able to get in a response before the door opens and a couple of figures enter the room.

\---

The man by his bedside kept his word and brought the doctor in, only with a whole host of other people, too, including, to Arthur’s surprise, Freya. She trails behind the others, refusing to make eye contact with him, eyes set and locked on the doctors—not the shouting woman, but a man with a head bald like Geoffrey’s. He seems just as weary and world worn as the librarian, too.

The man sits down in the chair which remains by his bedside. His posture indicates that he’s trying to come across as a non-threat, as though he’s not speaking to someone strapped down and forcefully made to sleep or be calm whenever he tries to escape.

“Hello, Arthur, I’m Doctor Williams and I am the attending doctor for the ICU tonight,” the man says, lines in his face creasing as he gives a pleasant smile. “How are you feeling today? I heard you had a bit of an incident.”

“An incident?” Arthur repeats, incredulously. He doesn’t like the way this man talks around things. “You mean when I woke up in a strange place, restrained and when I tried to get out, you stabbed me with something?”

The man nods as Arthur asks this, somehow making Arthur feel all the less heard.

“Well, Arthur, while we understand why you would be…” Doctor Williams searches for the right words, “uncomfortable. I hope you know that we did what we had to do for your own safety.” He looks at some piece of thin glass-looking thing with pages on it in his hand, the matter over. Except Arthur won’t let it be.

“For my own safety, what do you mean?” Arthur raises his tone. This is just getting to be ridiculous. “You stabbed me with a sharp object when I tried to leave and you haven’t told me  _ anything _ about where I am, why I’m here, and why you’re treating me like this.” He begins to unleash just a fraction of the anger and confusion he’s been feeling ever since he arrived at this terrible place.

A few people behind the doctor begin to tense, as though they’re about to draw a weapon and intervene should Arthur start acting up again. It makes him feel like even more of a caged animal.

The doctor holds his hand up, then turns around towards Freya, “A sharp object?” he asks.

Freya spares one singular glance towards Arthur, who tries to catch her eye for longer but fails. “He means a needle. We had to inject him intramuscularly in his left arm during the earthquake.”

Arthur can’t help but hold a bit of contempt for her. She’s been lying to him, pretending to help him. She turned him in to someone—perhaps Doctor Williams—and now he’s in this situation.

His disapproval dissipates when he remembers again the look on her face as he blacked out before. The unreadable expression—not full of malice or satisfaction at him being incapacitated, but a mix of confusion, fear, and…worry.

Worry for who? Him or her?

“Ahh,” Doctor Williams nods in understanding, breaking Arthur from his brief contemplation. The doctor turns back to address him.

“Well, you see Arthur,” he begins, “When you started to have your incident, there just so happened to be a minor earthquake in this area.”

An earthquake? No, Arthur did that. With magic. They have obviously been using magic here for their various devices, so why are the pretending like he didn’t perform it? He opens his mouth to explain this, but catches a look from Freya, who looks…panicked. For some reason, he gets the overwhelming feeling that by not mentioning magic, he’s protecting her. He doesn’t know why, but he listens to it, keeping silent as the doctor continues.

“It was only a minute long,” Doctor Williams explains, “but I’m sure that for your safety, as well as for the safety of the staff in the ICU, you needed to be restrained at that time.”

“And what about now?” Arthur asks, “Why am I tied up now? Is this  _ also _ for my safety?” He gestures to his restraints. Well, he tries to, but he doesn’t have a lot of range of motion right now.

“Absolutely,” Doctor Williams looks at his papers again, reading before answering, “It seems that before your incident, you stated that you were ‘Arthur Pendragon, King of Albion,’ and during your incident, you stated that we had ‘Merlin the wizard’ and that ‘we were also keeping  _ him _ here against his will,’” the doctor looks back up, “Does any of this sound strange to you, in retrospect?”

“What are you talking about?” Arthur responds, “What’s strange is you keeping me locked up like this without  _ actually _ telling me why.”

“So, you  _ do _ believe that you are King Arthur?” Doctor Williams completely ignores him, cutting to what he presumably finds to be the actual point. Arthur thinks he can hear a faint cough from his right, but promptly ignores it.

“Yes, but that’s not the point,” Arthur answers. He gets the feeling that it’s a bit impulsive when he says it. Judging by the way Freya continues to look at him—like he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life—he can’t help but feel as though something really strange is going on here. Aside from the usually magical practices—and even though he doesn’t understand them, he can understand how weird magic can get—there’s something unnerving going on with this place. Something that he can’t quite put his finger on.

Before Arthur can continue anymore, the doctor looks back down at his papers, thereby dismissing him again. “Well,” he says, starting to stand up, “Arthur, we’re going to send in a social worker to speak to you about your case and help both you and us figure out the steps we are going to take next to result in the best possible outcome for you.” He moves to leave with the host of people beginning to follow him. All except for Freya.

Doctor Williams gives her a questioning look.

“It’s almost time for his vitals,” she responds.

The doctor nods and makes his way over to the other side of the room, where the boy is. Once he and his group pass the divider, someone pulls the curtain all the way over.

Freya makes her way to Arthur’s left side, dragging something on tiny wheels from the corner of the room by the door. She must have brought that in with her.

Arthur tries to make out what the doctor is saying on the other side of the curtain, but he’s speaking in hushed tones. Arthur realizes that the boy is responding, just as quietly.

Just as he thinks he can make out a few words, Freya clears her throat.

“What?” he asks a touch too loudly. She’s been playing some weird game with him for the last few minutes and he wants to know why.

“Shhhhh,” she hushes him, “Whisper.” She raises her hands in a placating gesture, then wraps something around his left arm—the blood pressure cuff from before. He feels a twinge of pain as the cord at the end of the cuff makes contact with the crutch of his arm, where the other device used to be. Was that thing piercing his arm?

“That’s where you pulled the IV out,” Freya whispers. She seems to always catch onto what Arthur is thinking.

“Was that device inside my skin?”

“Inside your veins,” she answers easily, “It’s the easiest and most efficient way to get you the nutrients and fluid you need.”

“And the easiest way to put me down,” he answers.

“Listen,” she prefaces, “a lot was going on in the moment and we thought that there was a chance that you might hurt someone, or yourself. With an earthquake going on, that chance doubled.”

“An earthquake?” Arthur asks, disbelieving, “You and I both know what that was. It was—”

“An earthquake,” she says definitively, “There’s no other explanation.”

Something tells Arthur not to challenge this, but he does anyway.  “It was magic.” He also says this definitively.

Freya sighs to herself.

“Arthur,” she addresses him, “There is no such thing as magic.”

“Don’t talk like that guy,” he gestures towards Doctor Williams behind the curtain, “He’s an idiot.”

The curtain pulls back, and the doctor makes his way across the room, giving a salutatory nod towards Freya. She smiles in return, as though Arthur hadn’t just insulted the guy almost directly to his face. He seems to not have noticed anyway, because he makes his way out of the door, hoard in tow, and…not locking it. Freya must have a key so she can lock it on her way out.

“He’s not an idiot,” she responds a bit weakly, like she doesn’t entirely believe it herself, “and he’s right. There was no magic. It was just an earthquake. It felt like an earthquake. It acted like an earthquake. It was an earthquake.” She’s a bit flustered when she finishes.  

She seems to recognize this, coughs, and begins to regain her composure. Arthur waits for her to do so.

“Then why were you so afraid?” he asks softly, “Why did you ask me what I was?”

“I was confused,” she said, “I had a momentary lapse in judgement. I thought I saw something…” she drifts off the last syllable.

“What did you see?” he questions, pushing.

She hesitates, the cuff on his arm deflated and long forgotten. She searches his face for something—he doesn’t know what. Perhaps she’s looking for some sort of sign of betrayal or dishonesty within him. She must not find it because she answers’ albeit reluctantly.

“I thought I saw…” she hesitates for a moment, “I thought I saw your eyes glow.”

Like a sorcerer’s. He deflates in his position on the bed, suddenly realizing that he’s been keeping himself strung taught all this time.

He doesn’t really know how to take this. That’s it. He really does have magic.

Freya finishes doing “his vitals,” squeezing his ankles, putting the cold thing on his chest, putting the thing in his armpit—the works, really. He stays silent throughout all of it.

When she’s done, she writes something down in a small notepad that she removed from her pocket. Before she leaves, she spares him one last look. He catches it just before she walks out the door giving her a weak smile. She locks the door on the other side and he hears her footsteps retreat down the hallway.

With no help from anyone around him, Arthur begins to feel just another dose of hopelessness enter his system.

He closes his eyes and breaths. He’s feeling indescribable amounts of anger and worse off, he has no way to dispel it. He can’t hunt, he can’t spar—he can’t even take his sword to a practicing dummy. He’s just stuck and there’s nothing he can do about it.

There’s a few beats of silence—of Arthur stewing in his own helplessness—before a voice rings in from his left—the boy.

“Listen—” he begins. Arthur doesn’t let him finish.

“If someone you cared about was in danger, wouldn’t you do everything you could to find them, to help them?” he snaps, “Or would you just sit around and do nothing? Like a coward?”

“I would do everything I could to help them,” the boy snaps back, just as vicious. Arthur wonders why the boy won’t do anything, if he’s angry, too.

“Then why won’t you help?” Arthur practically yells.

“I told you, there’s no way out.”

“All you have to do is try, instead of just...giving up,” Arthur doesn’t know who he’s arguing with, anymore. The boy, or himself.

“How do you think I got here in the first place?” the boy rages, sounding nothing more than a man filled to the brim with anger and fury, with no room for anything else. Arthur hears something different, though. He hears the pain. He hears the desperation. It seems to match his own. The boy continues, “I tried to help someone I cared about, and I ended up here—like this.”

The boy sticks out a bandaged and bloody hand on the other side of the curtain. Arthur can’t see past his elbow, but based on the pattern of the dressing, the wounds most likely travel all the way up to his shoulder.

“So, you see,” the boy continues, “There is no way out. We’re stuck here until they throw us away, too.”

Its only then that Arthur realizes that they’re more than prisoners here, more than even patients, too. They’re more than angry and hurt and confused—they’re just a little bit broken.

And in that moment, just for the briefest flicker of time, Arthur completely resigns himself to his fate, whatever that may be. Wherever they want to send him. He’ll feel hopeless and lost either way.

There’s a beat of silence, perhaps two.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur finally says, all ire drained from him. All everything drained from him.

“What?” the boy sounds puzzled.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur continues, “That you’re in this situation. I’m sorry.”

The boy doesn’t respond for long enough that Arthur stops expecting one.

“Daegal,” the boy says.

“What?”

“That’s my name,” the boy—Daegal answers, “Daegal.”

“Nice to meet you, Daegal,” Arthur responds, “My name is Arthur.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Arthur,” the boy says hesitantly. It’s perhaps the nicest tone he’s used with him yet.

Suddenly, someone in the back of his head—someone who sounds a hell of a lot like Merlin--actively berates him (mocks him, more like it) for even considering giving up. A good king never gives up, ever. Especially when people rely on him. Merlin is relying on him.

Daegal is relying on him, now, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me @arthurandhisswordbros on tumblr dot com


	3. The Right Direction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit late. I don't really have a set schedule, but this one did take me a bit to get out. It's almost double the usual word count!
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely simthemuse (@ninjahijabimuse on tumblr)!

It takes Arthur a few more days to convince the “social worker” that his little “incident” happened because he was afraid of the earthquake and that it won’t happen again. He figures that the only way to get anyone to listen to him here is to play their game, to give them what they want. If they want to punish him for saying that magic is real and that he’s a king, then he’ll lie. He’ll do whatever he needs to do to get himself, Daegal, and Merlin to safety.

He is, however, unable to convince the social worker that he doesn’t think that he’s King Arthur of Albion. It makes sense, considering how many times he’s said it, even when given multiple chances to refute it. Either way, he estimates that it’s been about four to five days since he arrived here, and the faith on their part that he won’t try to leave must coincide with another treatment they have in store for him because they bring in someone to teach him how to exercise. Or, rather, to train him somehow.

When the man—Evan—first arrives and explains why, Arthur almost scoffs. Who on earth could possibly train him? He’s been training all of his life. He knows every fighting technique throughout all of Albion and has taught them to hundreds. It’s absolutely ridiculous and Arthur makes sure to mention that.

“Well,” Evan replies, setting a large carrying bag down—it’s excellently made, and Arthur would like the name and address of whoever tanned it. “I can guarantee you that what we’re going to do today has nothing to do with fighting.”

“I don’t  _ only _ know fighting techniques,” Arthur defends weakly. Evan chuckles.

“Do you know how to rehabilitate someone’s body after they have been lying in bed for almost a week?”

“No, but—”

“ _ And _ after a stab wound,” Evan continues, a wry smirk painting his face. That shuts Arthur up. He remembers Gaius insisting one of Arthur’s knights help him walk a few days after his encounter with the Questing Beast. Arthur blatantly refused and paid dearly for it—almost falling flat on his face in the royal hall did nothing good for his reputation as a respected prince at the time. In retrospect, it probably would have been less embarrassing to let the knight help him.

And his bedrest only lasted for a day or two, tops. Not close to a week. And he definitely did not have a stab wound then.

Evan frees Arthur’s right ankle, which is the last of his limbs to be restrained. He pauses for a moment, watching Arthur and presumably gauging whether or not he’s going to try to flee again. When Arthur doesn’t move, Evan nods to himself and begins the session.

He puts one hand on Arthur’s heel and another on his ankle. He then gently guides Arthur’s leg forward until it’s bending into a ninety-degree angle, holds, and straightens it back out.

“Do you need me to do anything?” Arthur asks, genuinely confused. If it’s training, isn’t he supposed to be a participant?

“Not yet,” Evan answers, “We’ll get there, don’t worry. You haven’t moved your legs in a bit, so I’m just making it a bit easier for you to do so.”

He continues for about five minutes for each leg. When he’s done, he makes his way up to the right side of Arthur’s bed.

“We’re going to sit up now, okay?” Evan asks rhetorically. Arthur nods in response, anyway.

Evan then presses his fingers into something on the outer side of the bed’s railing. Arthur tries to take a look, but is interrupted when he’s suddenly sitting up, the part of the bed under his back rising slowly and curving to support him.

He wants to say something about magic, but then remembers that he’s not supposed to.

Evan puts one hand on Arthur’s back and the other on his left leg, gently guiding him into a sitting position. Arthur lets out a groan, bemoaning just how stiff and weak his body feels. He  _ definitely _ feels worse than he did recovering from the Questing Beast’s bite.

His feet land hard on the ground and the floor beneath him is cold.

“Do you want to try standing up?” Evan asks. Arthur doesn’t answer, plants his hands on the bed and moves into a standing position. The weight is heavy on his joints and he begins to sway back and forth a bit. He feels nauseated.

“Woah, there,” Evan chuckles, steadying Arthur on his feet. He sounds like he’s tending to a wild horse, rather than someone who has defeated hundreds, if not thousands, in hand to hand combat.

Arthur promptly ignores him, pushing himself up on his toes to stretch his calf muscles, still using the bed and Evan’s support as leverage. It’s not as bad as he was expecting, most likely thanks to the previous exercise. Maybe this guy really does know what he’s doing.

“That’s good,” Evan praises. He then looks Arthur in the eyes, “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Arthur responds quickly.

It’s true. Even though he feels physically weak and just trying to keep himself steady is difficult, it’s something he’s familiar with. He knows how to train, how to push his body to the limit—he knows how to get stronger. So, for him, this is good. It certainly beats being restrained to the bed. He was lying there for so long, he thought eventually the plush mattress would swallow him whole.

Plus, being able to get on his feet is a step in the right direction to him getting out of there. Once he gets his strength back, he’ll be able to fight again.

He doesn’t mention any of this to Evan, of course—just shifts his weight from his left to his right and back again.

Evan nods, satisfied. “Okay,”’ he says, “I think that’s enough for today.” He makes to set Arthur back in the bed.

Arthur refuses, continuing fighting weakly to stand. “What do you mean?” he asks, “I just stood up.”

“We don’t want to put too much stress on your joints. Getting you reacclimated is a gradual process.”

Arthur looks at him questioningly.

“Think of your body as a rubber band, pulling too quickly will just snap it back into place. If you want it to stick, you have to stretch it out over time.”

Arthur has no idea what a “rubber band” is. He makes to tell Evan this, but he’s interrupted.

“Just do as he says, Arthur,” Daegal chimes in.

“You are as unhelpful as always, Daegal,” Arthur shoots back. He’s beginning to regret giving the boy his first name, with how he uses it with such disregard for Arthur’s status.

“Only for you, Arthur,” he responds, “Only for you.” Arthur can just hear the shit-eating grin on his face.

 “Okay, okay,” Evan says exasperatedly.

Arthur is too busy trying to come up with a quick retort to notice that Evan has set him back down on the bed. Arthur glares at him, which Evan promptly ignores in favor of ruffling around in his bag. He pulls out a strange, blue object. Arthur wants to say that it looks like a piece of fabric, but it doesn’t, really. The material is much stiffer, yet somehow still flexible—it lightly sways back and forth as Evan brings it over to the bed, light faintly reflecting off of it.

“What’s that?” Arthur asks.

“This?” Evan says, “It’s a rubber band, a lot thicker than usual, though. We’re going to use it for a new exercise.”

“A rubber band, like the thing my body is supposed to be like?”

“Exactly,” Evan holds the rubber band taught. “Now put your foot on here and try to push it forward.”

Arthur reluctantly does as commanded and finds that the task is quite difficult. “Well, I can’t push it because you’re holding it so tightly.”

“That’s the point of the exercise,” Daegal says.

“You’re forcing it too much, Arthur,” Evan says, yet again, before Arthur can respond, “You need to push slowly, so that you can work all of your muscles.”

Suffice it to say, Arthur is not very fond of how much he’s being interrupted during this session. He doesn’t mention this, though, because he gets the impression that Evan is doing much more good for him than anyone else has since he’s arrived at this facility. Well, perhaps aside from Freya. She’s been helping him, too. In her own way.

Daegal, though? Arthur spares a somewhat fond look towards the boy’s silhouette.

Entirely unhelpful.

Evan has Arthur repeat this process three times for each leg and by the end, Arthur is a sweaty, sore mess.

Has he really become this weak in such a short amount of time?

When they’re finished, Evan makes to put the “rubber band” back into his bag.

“Wait,” Arthur stops him, “can I keep that? I want to keep practicing.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back with it tomorrow. Also, remember? You shouldn’t push yourself too fast. You still have a lot of healing to do.”

Arthur nods in response. He doesn’t want to make things worse on his body. He’s been through a lot, so he’ll need to heal properly enough to get out of here.

“Also,” Evan bookends with a smile, “It’s my last one right now, so I have to keep it close.”

The door opens as Evan packs his rubber band away. He looks at a device on his wrist.

“Just on time,” Evan says. He sets Arthur back in his original position on the bed, pressing his fingers to the side railing, again, and Arthur lowers back to a steady recline.

“Well, I’m nothing if not punctual,” Freya says as she enters the room, key to the locked door still in hand, “How did it go?”

“Good,” Evan says brightly, smiling briefly at Arthur.

“Arthur was stubborn, though,” Daegal says.

“Oh,  _ I’m _ the stubborn one?” Arthur fires back, “You didn’t even tell me your name when we first met.”

Evan makes his way out of the door, shaking his head. He and Freya offer quick goodbyes and he shoots one out to Arthur just as the door shuts behind him.

“Daegal, give Arthur a break,” Freya calls out to the other side of the room, “It’s not his fault that he’s so hard-headed. It’s like a disease for him. More of an affliction, really.” She smiles at Arthur, who glares halfheartedly in return.

He changes his mind. She is entirely unhelpful, too.

\---

Arthur _does_ plan to take Evan’s advice, at first, and tries to treat his body like a rubber band or whatever. It’s not an entirely foreign concept to him: pushing oneself too hard while training can lead to injury. Whenever he or his knights ended up in Gaius’ quarters as a result of this, they were served the wretched eyebrow of doom, which really beat any ideas of all activities other than rest directly into the ground, buried and memorialized.

And Arthur gets it. He really does. He even agrees with Evan.

It’s just that, he doesn’t have the luxury of preparing for a battle that is  _ yet _ to come, nor does he have Gaius to help him when he overworks himself. He’s  _ currently  _ in battle, and he’s surrounded by enemies. Even those who wish to heal him do not wish to help him—Evan included—because if they did, they would listen to him.

So, he pushes himself much further than he knows he’s supposed to.

He can take it. He has before.

He’s  _ died  _ before. He can handle a few strained muscles.

Probably.

\---

Arthur starts off slowly with his routine, just keeping himself moving, flexing the muscles in his calves, wiggling his toes, and doing his best to mimic the exercises Evan does with Arthur’s legs before their sessions—which occur every day.

It’s daunting at first. His body feels too heavy for him to pick up at first, and if he works out for too long, he gets that nauseated feeling again. Nonetheless, he adapts and takes breaks when he needs too, hoping not to do himself too much damage.

Daegal seems to pick up on his little endeavor and asks him about it.

“Well, if we’re going to get out of here, I have to get strong again,” Arthur responds.

“We?”

“Yes. We.”

Daegal heaves a heavy sigh. “I told you my name, not that I would try to escape with you,” he says.

Arthur doesn’t stop moving his legs. “I thought that that meant you were on board.”

“It didn’t,” Daegal says frustratedly, “And I’m not.”

“But—”

“I’m not, Arthur. End of discussion,” the way he says it is definite, leaving little room for argument.

So, Arthur decides to save this battle for another day and continues his routine. He’ll convince the boy some other time because well…

Daegal doesn’t deserve to be here anymore than Arthur does.

Even if he  _ can _ be a pain sometimes.

“Plus, I’d be better off asking Doctor Williams to fireman carry me to freedom than counting on you to execute an escape plan without anyone noticing.” Daegal pulls Arthur from his thoughts.

He obviously means it as a joke—or at least, a partial joke. Despite this, Arthur is afraid to say that it does hold some truth to it—even though Arthur is unfamiliar with what a “fire man” is and cannot make any claims about it.

Arthur’s in a place completely foreign to him, where almost nothing makes sense. The way they speak here, the way they act—it gets stranger and stranger by the second for him. It’s so bad, that  _ they _ think that the things  _ he _ says are crazy. Daegal and Freya, included, sadly.

It’s…isolating to say the least.

So far, Arthur has been getting by just by studying the “battlefield,” but he can’t help but get the feeling that he’s missing something big. Or, a few big things really—he just can’t see them for whatever reason.

He feels blind and without anyone around to completely count on…well, he’ll just say it’s not an optimal way to enter a fight.

So, once Arthur deems himself fit enough—a day or two after doing his own exercises—he begins attempting to stand on his own. He wants to explore the room to really see what he’s dealing with. The various magical, “non-magical” devices this place often uses confuse him from far away, trapped to his bed. So, maybe he’ll understand them a bit more up close. Maybe he can even use one of them to his benefit, somehow.

Honestly, he just needs something to keep him moving forward.

\---

Arthur is successful in his attempt to get out of bed only on one occasion. It’s just his luck that the bed—a device itself, Arthur has come to realize—begins to alarm as soon as he does. He’s able to get back into his original position before Freya all but bursts into the room, but just barely.

As she arrives, she brings a host of people with her—others dressed like her, the man who was there when he woke up a few days ago, and someone who carries the same demeanor as one of his knights. Like a soldier.

“Arthur, what are you doing?” Freya asks warily. Both she and everyone who has entered the room look tense, ready to strike if necessary. They must have thought that Arthur was trying to escape again.

“I’m sorry,” he lies easily, “my legs have been feeling so stiff lately, that I wanted to practice the exercises Evan told me to do. I thought that I had to sit on the side of the bed to do it.”

Freya looks at Arthur like she can see right through him. Okay, maybe not so easily.

Despite this, Arthur holds his ground, unwavering.

Her posture relaxes, or, seems to relax—he can see right through her, too—and she turns away from him.

“It’s okay,” she says to the others, thereby dismissing them. They all make their way out the door, all except for the soldier-man, who lingers by the door.

Freya gives Arthur a look that says, “We’re going to talk about this later”—he’s not looking forward to it—then she’s out of the door, the soldier-man following her obediently.

Arthur lets out a deep breath that he didn’t know he was holding. That was…enlightening. A bit chilling, but still enlightening.

At least now he knows what he’ll be dealing when he attempts his escape. The soldier-man is an obvious threat—he’s big and strong. Also, when he came in, he had his hand on his hip—where a sword usually lies—which leads Arthur to believe that he has a weapon of some sorts. It makes Arthur wonder just how many soldiers they could have here and how many of them might be armed.

Also, if there’s some sort of alarm tied to the bed, what other safeguards are there to ensure that people like he and Daegal don’t get out? Perhaps he was naïve to think that he would just be dealing with people like Freya and Doctor Williams—people who could take him down with their devices, not brute strength—but he thought it anyway.

Honestly, it’s good to know—Arthur almost marks it as a success in his endeavor to gain knowledge of the battlefield.  Despite this, he now knows just how difficult it is going to be getting out of here. Daegal was right, he probably does have better luck being rescued by Doctor Williams.

Arthur stops himself short of that line of thinking—the one that leads to a long road of hopelessness. He promised himself that he wouldn’t go down that path, again because if he takes it, he’s certain to fail.  

The Great King Arthur, not the one sitting here right now who’s confined mentally and physically, but the man who has led many into terrible battles and has come out victorious, would take a fighting chance over a guaranteed defeat any day.

So, he’ll push himself as far as he can. He’ll find out what he’s missing, too—what’s staring him directly in his face that he just can’t see for some reason.

He’ll do what ever he can to give himself that fighting chance.

Then he’ll save everyone.

\---

Arthur can’t realistically exercise or explore or plan every second of the day, especially with the bed’s alarm in mind. There’s only so much he can do with what he’s working with and sometimes he just needs a break. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get bored out of his mind.

Usually, he would go train or hunt or talk to Merlin. But here, aside from visits from the doctors, Freya—who isn’t really speaking to him much lately—and Evan, he doesn’t really have many people to talk to. Well, he has Daegal, but unlike with Merlin, Arthur can only take so much of the boy at once.

It is still fun to mess with him, though.

“This is what I think you look like,” Arthur says, sticking out his artwork into the boy’s direction. They provided him several tools to entertain himself with a few days ago, saying something about there not being a “TV” in the room. The compact quill—which doesn’t have to be dipped in ink, amazingly—and book of blank pages were the only ones he could figure out.

Arthur sees a bandaged hang make its way past the curtain and hears a beleaguered sigh come from its owner.

“I have no idea what this is,” Daegal says, sounding genuinely confused.

“It’s you.”

“But it has three arms.”

“Uh huh.”

“And two of them are hooves.”

“I’ve only seen the one hand.”

“Arthur, this doesn’t do anything to make me think you’re sane.”

“You said we were  _ both _ crazy,” Arthur says, “Are you telling me that  _ you’re _ sane?”

Daegal blows out a puff of air. “Well, you got me there, guy,” he says.

“Don’t call me that,” Arthur responds, but lets it go. He sticks out his arm, quill in hand. “Here, draw what you think I look like.”

“I know what you look like.”

Arthur gasps, pretending to be more shocked than he is. “You peaked?”

“I did.”

“But that disrupts our unspoken privacy rule.”

“No rules here, guy,” Daegal states, deliberately trying to get under his skin. But what’s new, right? He continues, “And you never said that you wanted privacy.”

“Neither did you.”

“I didn’t give you my  _ name _ at first, what makes you think I’d want you to see me?”

“What makes you think I’d want  _ you _ to see  _ me _ ?”

“You want everyone to see you, otherwise you wouldn’t be shouting ‘I’m Arthur Pendragon, King of Albion’ all over the place,” Daegal says, chuckling afterwards.

“Well, you have me there,” Arthur says, doing his best to mimic Daegal’s tone earlier. And Daegal’s right. Really, other than that time he when undercover in that tournament, and other than the past few days where he’s been trying to lie low, he’s never had to consider being anything but…well, himself. His name almost always preceded him and if it didn’t, he made sure it did.

It makes him wonder how Merlin felt letting others, Arthur included, take credit for almost everything he did. It must have been difficult.

“You know,” Daegal says, breaking the silence. “I feel like you look like what I would picture Arthur Pendragon looking like.”

“It’s an honorable name, of course it suits me.”

“Of course, it does,” Daegal chuckles again. “It would.”

“What do you mean by that?” Arthur stops short.

“Nothing, nothing. Here,” Daegal tosses him his picture back, “this is what I look like.”

It’s crude picture of a man, only with scribbles all over his face and body.

Arthur is at a loss. Did he do something?

Sometimes he feels like there’s a wall between him and everyone else here. He’s already accepted that this world he’s somehow entered is strange and that for everything new right in front of him, there’s a host of new things he can’t see. It’s just that he doesn’t know what because he…can’t see it.

And he can’t help but feel a bit of anger at the people around him being vague about it. They don’t listen to him and they don’t tell him what he needs to know. It’s maddening and he knows that he shouldn’t entirely blame Daegal. Or, Freya, either. They are both doing what they have to protect themselves.

Arthur’s just angry that it sometimes has to be at the expense of him.

\---

Someone must have said something about him getting out of bed because he’s reprimanded by Doctor Williams the next day. He has his hoard in tow, as always. Freya is there again, too, and Arthur has a sneaking suspicion that she had something to do with the word getting out.  

“That was very irresponsible of you Arthur,” Doctor Williams reprimands him.

“I wasn’t trying to leave.” Arthur defends.

“I know you weren’t, but you have to see how getting out of bed unsupervised looks from our perspective,” Doctor Williams says this calmly, enough to almost make Arthur believe that he actually wants what’s best for him. “We don’t want to have to restrain you again. We really don’t.”

Never mind.

Arthur wants to argue with the man. He wants to ask why they’re acting like he’s a small child. Like he can’t comprehend the position they’re in. What is he missing, dammit?

Instead he shakes all of his questions off and tries his best look ashamed. He lowers his head in submission and says, “I know. It won’t happen again.”

And it won’t. Arthur will just try to find a way to get out of bed without the alarms going off next time.

The doctor must believe him because he only offers Arthur a smile and a pat on the shoulder, then leaves.

As soon as he does, Freya, who has been lingering by the door throughout this whole visit, tenses up again. She then makes a beeline for the side of his bed.

“Why are you trying to get out of bed? I thought you were trying _ not _ to have another incident?” she asks bluntly. So, they’re having this conversation now. Great.

“I’m not. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Sure, you weren’t.”

“I wasn’t,” he defends, “I just wanted to try standing again, without any help.”

“So you can break out, right?”

“No,” he lies. Well, half lies. He’ll be breaking out later, at an unspecified time.  

Freya sighs. “Arthur,” she says, “I know you want to get out of here, but this isn’t the way to do it. Trying to get out of bed after they trusted you enough to get rid of the restraints is a step in the  _ wrong _ direction.”

“Then what is the  _ right _ direction?”

“Getting better slowly, proving that you’re not a danger to yourself or anyone else.”

“And how am I going to do that?”

“Well, you can start by not lying to the doctor, for one.”

“They won’t  _ listen  _ to me, Freya,” it’s perhaps the first time he’s invoked her name. It feels oddly personal. She must feel the same, because she lowers her tone to something soft.

“They will if you tell them—”

“I’ve tried telling them the truth—that didn’t work. Then I tried telling them that I don’t believe I am who I say I am and that I don’t believe in magic and that hasn’t gotten me out this situation either.”

“Then, maybe you need to just give this up,” she says resolutely.

“Give what up?” he pauses, the momentum of their argument staggering.

“Give up…just give up on this whole magic business. None of it is real, Arthur,” she says this calmly, like she’s letting him down as lightly as she can. Except he knows her, knows that she’s trying to convince herself, for whatever reason, more than she’s trying to convince him.

“You and I both know, fully well, that that is not true,” his voice is steady, unrelenting, “Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so afraid of me getting out of this bed.”

He’s really just fueling all of his anger and frustration into this conversation because something has been triggered in him. Maybe something has been triggered in her, too.

“I don’t  _ know _ anything,” she breaks eye contact when she says it, then looks down, anger and…hurt coloring her face. “Arthur, you’re just going to end up getting hurt."

Again, if her words are aimed at him or herself, it’s hard to tell.

“At least I’m not lying to myself,” he says.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she snaps.

“You saw what happened,” he pushes, “You can’t run away from it, any more than I can.” And he can’t. He has magic, he’s accepted that. All he can do is move on from there.

What that means may scare her for whatever reason, but it’s the truth. He thinks that she should move on, too. Then, maybe she can actually help him in a way that matters, not just on her terms. Maybe she’ll help herself in the process, too.

His words must strike a little too close to home, though. Closer than he thought they would. She looks visibly shaken.

“You know nothing about me. I’m not running away from anything.” She runs a hand over her face, sighs deeply and whispers to herself, “I can’t believe I’ve gotten myself to this point.”

She makes eye contact with him again and he can see the fear in her eyes. Why is she so afraid? Why is she  _ always _ so afraid?

“Arthur, I need you to listen to me,” she commands, “This, right here,” she makes a wide gesture, encapsulating the general area, “This is my job. And you are my patient. I am not your friend.”

“No, I guess you’re not,” he says. This time  _ he _ breaks eye contact, looking straight ahead. It’s petty and he doesn’t mean it and he’s sure that she doesn’t mean what she’s said, either. At least, not entirely—she’s just protecting herself. He understands, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. It doesn’t make him feel any less alone.

She huffs in exasperation and slowly makes her way to the door. Before she opens it, though, she pauses.

“The alarm on your bed is weight-based. So, getting out, even just a little bit, will set it off.”

It’s something, maybe an apology. Maybe a sign of trust. Or maybe it’s just a way to leave the conversation without the last word being something they’ll both regret.

She leaves, locking the door on the other side and Arthur hears two sets of feet retreat down the hallway.

It reminds him of the soldier in the hallway, of the threat which looms over his escape. The multiple threats which seem to pile up by the minute.

\---

Keeping Freya’s last words in mind, it doesn’t take Arthur long to realize that during his sessions with Evan, he is able to get out of the bed without the alarm going off. So, when Evan asks Arthur if he wants to stand up during their next session, Arthur pays attention to the other man’s movements.

Once Arthur recognizes that what Evan presses on to bring Arthur into a sitting position may have to do with the alarm system—individual paintings, which are slightly raised on the surface of the outer railing—it only takes one more session for Arthur to figure out which ones. Evan eyes him suspiciously as he does but doesn’t comment on it. He probably writes it off as Arthur wanting to know how to raise his bed.

After that, Arthur is able to stand, then walk a few steps while holding on to the side of the bed, then walk a few freely. And all without any alarms going off.

He also makes sure to stay away from the door in his endeavors, just in case someone might see him through its window. This, along with being tied down by the IV device, doesn’t really allow him to explore anywhere other than his general vicinity—he can’t get across the room like he wants to, and he doesn’t want to attempt to go past the curtain to preserve what little privacy Daegal is trying to maintain. The boy may have negated their unspoken privacy rule, but they both know that it is still fully in place.

Speaking of Daegal, there has been no mention of the drawing. The boy only offers sarcastic and semi-insulting comments to Arthur during his training. Arthur shoots back his retorts, in turn, albeit halfheartedly. After their last conversation, he’s still not able to shake the feeling that he’s failing the boy, even though Daegal is choosing not to help. He feels protective over Daegal, for some reason.

Maybe, it’s because as Arthur gets to know him more and more, he can’t help but shake the feeling that he is a lot like Merlin. They both care about others to the point of their own detriment—if Daegal’s words about how he got his injuries are anything to go by, and Arthur thinks that they are.

They both also like to continuously make a fool out of Arthur, for whatever reason. Arthur thinks that if—no,  _ when _ he gets them all out of here, Merlin and Daegal will probably get into all kinds of trouble in Camelot.

Somehow, it’s a nice thought—one of the nicer ones he’s had since he’s been here. It reminds him what he’s fighting for and that this path he’s chosen has something good at the end of it—something that’ll be worth all of this hardship he’s enduring.

Right?

\---

His little exercises must have paid off because a few days later, Evan deems Arthur strong enough to walk around the room on his own.

Evan unhooks Arthur’s IV device from the wall and Arthur almost marvels. He thought that it was permanently chained to it, and he to the device. Evan catches his wonder and attempts to hide his chuckle by clearing his throat.

Arthur immediately drops his expression. “So, I can go anywhere?” he says to change the topic.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Evan says, going along with it, a bemused look on his face, “As long as it’s not out the window.”

“What about out of the door?” Arthur inquires.

“Well, you can’t go out today, but I think that I might be able to convince the higher ups to let you walk around the unit.”

Arthur stops short. “That would be really amazing, Evan,” he says, showing genuine appreciation.

If he can get out of this room, he can figure out what he’s up against once he goes past those doors. So far, he has only been able to rely on the things that come into the room, as well as what information he intuits from them. If he can figure out how to get out of this fortress, castle—whatever, then he can make his way anywhere. He can make his way home.

What Evan offers is absolutely a step towards doing that.

“Yeah, no problem,” Evan says, “But, you have to show me that you’re able to actually, physically walk out there.”

Arthur stands up without prompting—belatedly thankful that Evan already disabled the bed’s alarm—and begins walking.

\---

“Arthur, I’m worried.”

The last person he expects that to come from is Daegal, but one day when Arthur is practicing his walking, the boy says it.

“Worried? Why?” Arthur asks.

There’s a beat of silence. Daegal must be hesitant, which is entirely out of character for him, based on what Arthur’s seen so far. The boy is almost always unabashed in what he says, shouting out what Arthur presumes to be his every thought in real time, as they develop in his head.

“I’m worried that this plan of yours isn’t going to work out the way you think it is.”

Arthur can’t help but roll his eyes, but then realizes that Daegal probably can’t see it. So, he lets out a sigh to compensate.

“Daegal, just because you like to occasionally peak through your little curtain doesn’t mean that you can listen in on my conversations with Freya. Or, anyone, for that matter.”  

“It’s not that—well, it is, but not  _ just _ that.”

“Then what  _ is  _ it?”

“I’m just afraid you won’t have anywhere to go if—”

“When,” Arthur interrupts.

“ _ When _ ,” Arthur imagines Daegal rolls his eyes, too, “you get out.”

“What do you mean? We’ll go to Camelot when we get out.”

“There you go with that ‘we’ stuff, man,” Daegal says exasperatedly, “There isn’t going to be a ‘we,’ Arthur.”

It’s Arthur who pauses this time.

“Daegal, I can’t leave you behind. You don’t deserve to be here,” he echoes his thoughts from their last discussion about this.

“Maybe I do—”

“You don’t,” Arthur says, turning his head towards the boy’s silhouette. “So, I’m going to get us out of here, get Merlin, and we’ll go back to Camelot. Gaius, my court physician will take care of you. You’ll have a place there.”

Daegal’s silence is more telling. He still thinks that Arthur is crazy, just like the others. Just like everyone here.

“Arthur,” Daegal finally speaks, “there’s nothing there for me. Out there, or anywhere.”

“That’s not true,” Arthur says, “We have people waiting for us in Camelot—”

“And I’m not sure there’s anything out there for you, either,” Daegal says briskly, “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

Arthur takes his words like a punch in the face.

“You’re wrong,” Arthur rages, “I have people waiting for me. My family, my kingdom.”

Daegal doesn’t respond.

The silence is heavy, and Arthur feels a dark undercurrent of dread settle itself in his chest, hovering over something that he doesn’t know—a huge gaping hole.

Something snaps in Arthur.

“What am I missing, Daegal?” Arthur almost yells, reaching a new level of frustration, “Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

“You’re not missing anything. You just won’t listen to the people here. They’re trying to help you and you’re not hearing them.”

“They’re not hearing  _ me _ , Daegal. And you aren’t, either, apparently. So, my only hope is to get out of there, save you and Merlin and finally go home.”

Daegal heaves another sigh and doesn’t respond at all this time, like he just doesn’t want to argue anymore. Like talking to Arthur is talking to a brick wall.

“I’ll get us out of here, Daegal,” Arthur says, “I promise, I’ll figure a way out.”

He doesn’t know if he does it to assure the boy—assuage the feelings of fear that he knows the boy feels deeply—or if it’s a promise to prove something to him. To prove that he’s not crazy.

If he’s _going_ crazy or not, though. Well, that’s an entirely different story.

\---

Evan keeps his word and they allow Arthur to take a supervised walk around the “unit.”

The soldier-man has to join them, of course, and while Arthur doesn’t know what is on the other side of that door, he does know that there must be some assurance for them that he’s not going to get out—extra guards, more locked doors—he doesn’t know what. Either way, he must have somehow convinced them that he’s not going to hurt anyone  _ within _ the unit.

Arthur shoots a look back at Daegal’s silhouette, feeling…conflicted about their previous conversation. He wants this to work for him. He wants this to be a good learning experience for him. Only, there’s a tiny voice in the back of his head, which sounds like almost everyone he’s met here, that sows a seed of doubt. What if he only finds more obstacles? What if there really is no way to get out of here?

“Arthur, you’ll need these, just to be safe,” Evan interrupts his thoughts, passing him his sun glasses. He hasn’t needed them here—it’s been kept relatively dark for the most part, and his eyes seem to have adjusted what little light they allow in the room, anyway.

He reluctantly puts them back on, shuddering at the memory of being confined to the bed. It reminds him of how far he’s come in such a short time. So, he shakes off any remaining grim thoughts and lifts himself up, with the help of Evan.

They slowly make their way to the door, IV device in tow.

The soldier-man opens the door and Arthur has to immediately brace himself against the flood of light and sounds breaching the dark, isolated room’s atmosphere. He’s suddenly thankful for the sun glasses because the light would surely be blinding. Despite this, there isn’t anything to help him with the sound, which is stark in its intensity, almost making him want to step back into the safety of the room.

No, he’s come this far, he needs to keep going. Losing momentum will only set him back.

So, he steps out into the light confidently only to find it much worse that he could have thought. He doesn’t know if it’s was him being away for so long, him still recovering, or what, but the world has never been this loud before.

He can hear every voice, every device, every footstep echo around him, then multiplied. The sound pushes itself off of the walls, the floors, and the ceiling like a tidal wave rushing towards him.

“Are you okay?” Evan asks.

Arthur nods despite himself. He begins walking, pushing forward, doing his best to catalogue what he sees—really anything in front of him. But the world feels like it’s gone to madness.

It’s  _ deafening. _

Arthur starts to retreat within himself. He can’t focus on anything.

He shakes his head, trying to expel the sounds somehow. It doesn’t work, so he does the next logical thing and puts his hands over his ears.

And it works, for a few seconds, before he feels a hand on his arm—the soldier-man must have taken his sudden movements as a threat—and yanks it away from his ear. The sound trickles back in and Arthur the world begins shaking.

Suddenly, the sounds get worse.

People start shouting, voices mixing and raising into a cacophony of tsunamic proportions. The grip on his arm completely lets go and the presence by his side disappears.

Arthur’s palm finds its way back to his ear and it gets a little bit better. He falls to his knees, curving into himself for protection, for some semblance of safety.

It takes him a few moments to register a hand softly stroking his back, familiar.

Freya.

“It’s okay, Arthur,” she intones. They haven’t really spoken since their fight a few days ago. All of that washes away now. “It’s okay, just relax.”

So, he does.

And for one moment, he stops trying to bear it all.

He stops pushing himself further and further. He just lets Freya soothe him into a calm not borne of drugs or lies.

Suddenly, the room stops shaking, and the voices quiet a bit.

She lifts him up, presumably with the help of Evan, and they slowly walk back into his dark room. Arthur keeps his ears covered but dares to open his eyes again.

The last thing he sees of the world outside of his room is its upheaval. Objects thrown and strewn across the polished floor. And a sizeable crack in the wall directly across from him.

The door shuts. They lead him to his bed, and he lays down, closing his eyes and letting himself recover.

Or, he would.

“That was crazy.” Evan whispers, “I mean, I was here for the last earthquake, but…this was so much worse.”

“This one was definitely worse, you’re right.”

“I mean, I thought aftershocks were supposed to be lighter after the original.”

“I really don’t know,” she says.

He can feel Freya’s eyes on him. Evan must notice, too.

“Do you think that he’ll be okay?” he says, “He seemed to not take too well to going outside the unit.”

“Yeah, he’ll be all right,” she states, “Hey, why don’t you go see if you can help out there?”

“Technically, I’m supposed to be watching him, but…”

“I’ll do it,” she says. He must hesitate because she adds, “I have to change his dressing, soon, anyways.”

“Okay. Are you sure?” he sounds like he’s already almost out of the room.

“Positive,” Freya answers. Arthur opens his eyes to see her smiling, only it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Evan stalls for a second—maybe he sees it too—then leaves without any more prompting. Once the door closes behind him, Freya bends over, letting out a long, shaky breath.

“I’m sorry, Freya,” Arthur says.

She starts crying then and Arthur realizes that maybe she’s been pushing herself, too. They sit there like that for a while, unhinged and not hiding anything.

Finally, she answers.

“I know, Arthur. Me too.”

And the rest goes unsaid, because it can. They’re both scared, for one reason or another and they’ve both been running away from something.

All this time, Arthur thought that he was facing his fears, directly, but really, he’s been running away from everything that’s changed since he’s woken up—namely his magic. Maybe Daegal was right. Maybe he  _ wasn’t _ listening, only not to people like Doctor Williams because everything they’ve ever said was just to keep him down, locked away and forgotten like Daegal said. He needed to start listening to himself.

He has magic now. It’s not just a passing thought. It’s not something that he can breeze over. It’s a part of him and it’s taken him this long to realizes that he’s been denying it as much as Freya has.

“I’m done pretending,” he says, finally, “Are you?”

She hesitates, still sniffling, “I don’t know.”

Arthur, for once, doesn’t push. He can just let it be for now.

He has a plan, now. A real one.

And he’s going to use his magic to do it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me @arthurandhisswordbros on tumblr. Thanks for reading!


	4. Practice Makes Perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely simthemuse (@ninjahijabimuse on tumblr)!

Arthur dreams again the night of his second “incident.” Only, it’s the same dream he had before; the only one he’s had since arrived at Mountainside General. 

He’s on his back, feeling peaceful. Suddenly, someone is there, his chest pains him, he feels peaceful again and then it’s over.  

It’s disorienting, to say the least. Mostly because this time, he’s watching himself from the outside. 

He can see himself laying there, eyes closed, looking blissed out. Then someone runs to his body, coming down from a hill towards where he lies by the lakeshore. They shuffle up dirt as they make their way and leave deep tracks behind them. 

And Arthur just can’t make them out. Every time he tries to, his eyes glaze over the figure without his permission, landing on whatever is closest beside them. 

The figure approaches his body and lifts it up. 

Then Arthur wakes up again. 

\---

Arthur groans in frustration. Partly because of the dream he just had, and partly because of the sensory headache he has left over from the previous day. All of that stimuli coming in left him with a migraine unlike any other he’s felt before. 

That reminds him.

“Daegal,” Arthur whispers to see if the boy is awake. 

No response. Arthur tries one more time, only louder. 

“What?” Daegal answers sharply, annoyed at just having been woken up. Oh yeah, and based on their last conversation, he’s probably still irritated with Arthur. Arthur decides to irritate him even more. 

“I figured out how to get out of here,” Arthur says almost brightly, the grogginess from sleep having completely worn off at this point. He still has the headache, but his excitement surpasses the pain. 

“We’re really doing this again?” Daegal responds, sounding like he’s ready to turn on his side and go back to sleep. 

“I have a new plan.”

“You had a plan before?”

“Well, nothing…concrete.”

“You were just going to punch your way out, weren’t you?” Daegal frames it like a question, but really, it’s more of an accusation.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Arthur asks defensively. 

“A plan needs to be, well…planned. Fighting your way out is just going in blind.”

“I was going to gather information about the layout before—”

“It’s got to be more than just knowing the layout, Arthur,” Daegal sighs, giving off that aura of a parent scolding their child. Arthur, like always, does not appreciate it.

“Then what would you do?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“I wouldn’t do anything,” Daegal says resolutely. It makes Arthur angry, like it’s just a repeat of their conversation last time. Being here has him feeling like he’s constantly running in circles. 

“You seem to be doing a lot of that already,” Arthur snaps. He does it partially out of genuine frustration, but also to provoke the boy. Arthur realized a long time ago—well, a few days ago, but still—that Daegal is much the same as Arthur. Giving up is a short road to hopelessness and inactivity in the face of danger leads to depression…and guilt.

And that’s the thing. Arthur feels guilty. 

He feels guilty for letting everyone down, for dying, and for leaving people behind—Merlin, Gwen, his knights, and everyone back at the kingdom. He won’t do it again. Not here, not anywhere. 

Arthur is so lost to his thoughts that when Daegal snaps back, it almost shocks him. 

“Well, what are going to do about the guard, then, genius?” He sounds livelier than he has in days. 

“So, there’s only one?” Arthur asks. Well, that would make it easier to get out of the unit. And once he’s out of the unit, it should be easier to get out of the building. 

“On this floor, yeah,” Daegal says, trailing off at the end. He sounds like he’s just caught on to Arthur’s game. It doesn’t matter, he at least gave Arthur something. Floors mean steps and steps are not good for someone recovering from a stab wound. Arthur’s best guess is that Daegal is in the same condition as him, or worse, so that makes it all the more difficult. 

“What floor are we on, then? And how do we get past the guards on the other floors?”

“I’m not answering you anymore, Arthur,” Daegal says, the life slowly fading from his voice again. 

“But you want to,” Arthur guesses. 

Daegal’s lack of an answer is really an answer in itself. Arthur takes is as a win, albeit, a reluctant one. 

“Don’t worry,” Arthur says after a bout of silence, “I’ll show you. It’ll all be worth it.”

Now that he knows what he can do—he’s created two earthquakes without even trying—he has more faith in his ability to escape than ever. He saw what Merlin could do with his magic, saw the brilliant feats he performed as he stood atop the mountain over the battle at Camlann. He doesn’t think that he could do that, but if he even has a shred of that power, he can do something. 

Maybe with it, he can do a shred of the good that Merlin did with his magic. 

“Arthur,” Daegal calls out sounding like it physically pains him to say it.

“Yes?” Arthur drawls it out, just to be annoying. Daegal heaves a heavy and long sigh. Arthur thinks that he’s making it intentionally long, where every second makes up for the little bit of pride he has to swallow for what he’s about to say next. 

“What’s the new plan?”

Arthur smiles. 

\---

“You can’t expect me to help you if you can’t even do just a little bit of magic,” Daegal says distractedly from where he’s drawing in the book of blank pages that Arthur gave him. 

It’s been hours since Arthur told Daegal about his plan and he’s still trying to convince him. First, he told him about the two earthquakes at his own hands, which got him a disbelieving scoff and a, “I would believe in a tsunami-tornado-earthquake combo before I believed you had magic.”

It doesn’t go over too well, either, when Arthur explains that he would be using said magic to get them out of there. Daegal says some things that Arthur would be hesitant to repeat. Here’s a memorable one, though:

“Well then, my liege, why don’t you just jump out of this window, turn into a lovely little flying squirrel mid-air and hover along to your destiny?”

So, naturally, the next thing Arthur does is try to conjure magic in front of Daegal. You know, to prove him wrong. 

Only, it isn’t really working out for him. Hence, the “hours later.” 

“Just give me a moment,” Arthur says, voice coming out strained. He’s trying to put all of his energy into, he doesn’t know, making something; an earthquake, a ball of fire—he would even settle for a gust of air right now. 

“You’ve been saying that for hours now, Arthur,” Daegal pushes.

“Well, maybe if you’d let me concentrate, I could actually produce something,” Arthur all but shouts. 

“Then go ahead,” Daegal says, and Arthur can imagine him making a sweeping motion while he does. 

“Thank you,” Arthur sighs in relief. Now, back to work. 

He sits there for a few minutes. At first, he tries to reach within himself, hoping to discover some force or some energy to ignite—some string to pull on, he doesn’t know. When that doesn’t work, he tries to reach outwards, setting his sights on the table in front of him and trying to make it shake just with his willpower. That doesn’t work either. 

He drops his shoulders, heaving a frustrated sigh and ready to give up. Then, he’s suddenly reminded of when Merlin pushed the two Saxon men during Arthur’s last days. It happened in a flash, so Arthur doesn’t remember much. What he does remember, though, is Merlin holding his arms out when he used his magic. Maybe that’ll work. It can’t hurt to try, right? 

This time, Arthur sets his focus on something more concrete—the empty water cannister at the corner of the table—and puts his arms straight forward. Then, he thinks push. 

And nothing happens.

“Maybe you just don’t have the ability to focus,” Daegal says, with impeccable timing, as always. He hands Arthur his artwork. It’s a picture of a distracted squirrel with wings, a crown on his head and the label “King Arthur” across it’s chest. 

Arthur growls in frustration, which Daegal seems to enjoy. Arthur attempt to retaliate by ripping the page up, but before he can, someone’s unlocking the door. So, Arthur just settles for bunching up the page and throwing it in Daegal’s direction. 

“Hey,” Evan calls as he enters the room, “How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?”

Arthur reserves his irritation for a later hour, choosing instead to reduce his expression into something tamer and says, “I have a pretty bad headache, but otherwise, I’m okay.”

“I’m glad,” Evan answers and the thing is, he genuinely looks it. It surprises Arthur, yet he gets the feeling that it probably shouldn’t. Evan has been nothing but kind to him—he hasn’t treated Arthur like a child. When Arthur asks questions, Evan works to make sure he gets an answer rather than just cutting him off. Arthur resolves to appreciate it more. Really, any help he can get here should be valued. 

“So, I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday,” Evan says, taking a calming breath, like he’s bracing himself for something. “I don’t think…that I can let you walk around the unit for a little while. After what happened, with you looking like you were about to implode and all as soon as we stepped out, I don’t think that it’s best to reintroduce you into that environment just yet.”

“But—”

“But,” Evan states, holding his hand out to placate Arthur, “on the plus side, due to how you acted during the earthquake—as in, not hurting anyone or anything—I think that they might let you have a little bit more freedom. Or, rather, I can ask them to allow you more freedom.”

“And what does that entail exactly?” Arthur asks, perking up slightly. The unit thing isn’t great, but on some level, Evan is right—perhaps it would be too much to go back out there. 

“I think I can make it so that I don’t have to be here for you to get out of bed,” Evan says it like its Arthur’s newfound liberation and perhaps it is. A freedom like this, albeit a minimal one, could ensure that he’s not being watched as closely. 

“That would be great,” Arthur does his best to sound cheerful and Evan gives him a smile in return, “But what about walking around the unit? Is there any way I could build myself back up to that?” He does his best to not make it sound so greedy when he says it, hoping that Evan will afford him the benefit of the doubt. 

“Well,” Evan says, scratching his head, “I suppose you could try to build your tolerance back up for the time being. Maybe increase the brightness in the room, get some music in here to get you used to louder sounds, too?”

Music? Arthur hasn’t heard music in what feels like forever. The last time being at the tavern where he and Merlin gambled with dice. And yes, Arthur does now realize that Merlin was definitely cheating. 

“What kind of music would he even listen to?” Daegal’s voice rings in. 

“I don’t know. Classical, maybe? He doesn’t strike me as someone who listens to rap,” Evan answers wryly. 

“You know I’m right here, right?” Arthur states, “I’m right here in front of you. No need to talk about me like I’m not.”

“You’re right, Arthur. I’m sorry. What kind of music do you like?” Evan asks, directing his attention back towards Arthur. 

Arthur thinks about it. “I was quite the fan of Lady Helen.” Well, before she turned into a witch who tried to kill him. 

“Lady Helen? I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Is she like Lady Gaga?” Evan drops his bag on the bed by Arthur’s feet. “I love Lady Gaga. Have you heard of her?”

“I haven’t. What land does she belong to?”

“New York, I think?” Evan pauses where he’s rummaging through the bag, looking for something. 

“I haven’t heard of a New York. Is it in Essetir?”

“You two have gotten completely off track,” Daegal’s voice rings in again.

Evan makes a triumphant sound when he pulls out the rubber band. “I found it,” he says, “Now let’s get going.” 

\---

The session goes as it usually does, although, with an undercurrent of annoyance on Arthur’s part. He bemoans the fact that they seem to regress in the exercises they do—only going for a few steps around the room and spending extended time with the rubber band, rather than graduating to anything too challenging. Although, to Arthur’s surprise, he still finds it to be hard work. Maybe he wasn’t ready to go out just yet. 

Speaking of, Evan keeps his word and doesn’t let Arthur anywhere near the unit. It’s just that Arthur didn’t think that that meant going so far as to avoid even the door which leads to it. Arthur asks him about this during the end of the session. 

“Well, I just didn’t want to push you too much after what happened yesterday. Also, you said that you had a migraine and I figured that the light from the window wouldn’t be too helpful,” Evan explains, and it makes sense, as the things that the man says usually do. 

Arthur nods from where he sits on the bed, simultaneously mentally cursing himself for bringing up the migraine. 

“Also,” Evan continues, “I heard that they cut your pain meds, so I figured that it might be a bit harder for you to walk.”

Arthur gives him a questioning look. “Cut my meds?”

“Yeah, they’re not giving you as many drugs to help with the pain. They’re only giving you half, I heard.”

They’re weaning him off of the drugs. So that’s why the exercises were so difficult. And that’s probably why his migraine hasn’t gone away yet. Arthur resigns himself to the fact that it probably won’t for a while. He then takes moment to remind himself that it’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t become too dependent on the drugs because once he breaks out of here, he won’t have anything to dull the pain. 

Although, it does beg the question of their motive. Why are they lessening his dependence on them? Is it true that they really are willing to grant him more freedom? Or is there another motive? 

“Why would they do that?” Arthur asks. 

Evan softly claps him on the back. “You’re healing, Arthur. It’s a good thing.”

Arthur wants to ask more questions, but before he can, the someone’s opening the door. 

Evan looks at this wrist and says, “Right on time,” with a smile, like he always does. Only, this time, instead of his recipient being Freya, its someone Arthur doesn’t know. 

The man seemingly reluctantly returns Evan’s grin, but doesn’t do so for long, shifting his focus to Arthur briefly. He makes his way towards the side of the bed and says, “Hello, my name is Jack. Nice to meet you. I’m going to be your nurse for today.” 

Jack sounds like he’s going through the motions. Disingenuous. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he immediately shifts his focus to Arthur’s arm and without any prompting, begins taking his vitals. 

“Nice to meet you, too, Jack,” Arthur responds flatly, then flips his attention back to Evan. “Where’s Freya?” While Arthur is used to a rotation of different “nurses,” Freya usually works most of the week—often three or four days in a row—from morning to nighttime, approximately twelve hours. It’s the middle of the week, and given her usual schedule, she should be here. 

“She called out. Something about not feeling well,” Jack says with a hint of annoyance, still not looking up, “I’m covering for her today, and probably until she gets better.” He mumbles the last part, not so quietly that he can’t be heard, but also not loudly enough to be glaringly obvious. 

“That sucks,” Evan states simply. He’s right. It does indeed suck, especially after Freya and Arthur’s last conversation. He honestly thought that today would be a step in a new direction—perhaps the right one she wanted. 

“I know right,” Jack says. He rolls his eyes and oh, he thinks it’s about him having to come into work. Arthur shoots a look towards Evan, who seems to have just had the same thought if the slight frown on his face is anything to go by. 

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Arthur asks Jack, really asking when Jack is going to get out of here. 

Jack still isn’t looking at him. “Just said that I didn’t,” he says this time with full annoyance. Before he continues, though, he must catch his tone. “Sorry,” he offers with a weak smile. Arthur obviously doesn’t buy it. 

“Well, I have to go,” Evan states, trying to escape the awkward atmosphere. He then backs out of the room, bag in hand and with a wave in Arthur’s direction. Arthur nods in return. 

Jack continues taking Arthur’s vitals. He’s not so pleasant about it either—he doesn’t stop for conversation and he doesn’t make eye contact with Arthur again. When he’s done, he leaves without so much as a mumbled, “See you in two hours.”

Arthur sits in silence, brewing in irritation. Below that though, resides an undercurrent of worry at the knowledge of Freya’s absence. He doesn’t get it, she seemed fine yesterday—well, she seemed physically fine. He didn’t catch any warning signs of incoming ailments from her. Is she ignoring him?

No, that doesn’t feel right either. Freya may sometimes act purposefully ignorant when it comes to his magic, but she would never outright ignore him. 

Right? 

Never mind. She probably just needs a few days for…whatever she needs a few days for. Arthur needs to focus on moving forward.  

“Whatever our plan is, can we take Jack out while we do it?” Arthur calls out to the other side of the room. 

“You can’t plan on hurting someone just because they’re an asshole,” Daegal exasperates. 

Arthur feels an annoying grin wash onto his face. “So, you think he’s an asshole, too?” 

Daegal sighs, but Arthur knows that the boy is grinning, too. It’s a move that pretty much sums up their general dynamic. 

“I don’t think he’s an asshole, just…more of a prick.” 

“So, you don’t like him.”

“Are you actually serious about this?”

Arthur doesn’t respond, because the answer is obvious. Daegal keeps silent for a moment. 

“Well, he’s no Freya,” he finally relents, echoing Arthur’s thoughts from earlier. His voice is soft, honest. It’s almost odd to hear. Even though on some level, Arthur knows that when Freya attends to him, she also attends to Daegal, he never really thought that they knew each other that well. In fact, now that he’s thinking about it, Daegal was already in this room when Arthur arrived. Who’s to say that he wasn’t here for longer? Who’s to say that he hasn’t known Freya for longer, too?

If that’s the truth, then he might be just as worried about her as Arthur is. He wouldn’t say it, though, because of course he wouldn’t. He’s Daegal. 

Arthur wants to confirm all of this, or at least some of it, but that wouldn’t get him anywhere. So, instead he opts to simply say, “You are absolutely right.” 

“But, that’s no reason to hurt someone,” Daegal returns, all gentleness fading just as quickly as it appeared. 

“I’m not going to hurt him. I’m just going to…take his clothes.”

“You’re going to take his clothes?” Daegal asks slowly. 

“Well, I may have to hurt him to do that, but yes. I am going to take his clothes, put them on and then get us out of here.”

“Arthur,” Daegal stops him short, “you do know that you can’t just switch clothes with someone and escape, right? They’ll see your face. Also, you don’t know where or how to get out even if that did work.”

“So, what would you recommend?” Arthur says, trying to keep the smile from his face, just in case Daegal is watching. 

“I—” Daegal starts but must realize what Arthur is trying to do. “I told you that I won’t help until I see some magic.”

Arthur waits for him to relent again. It doesn’t happen, so he settles for now and huffs out an annoyed breath, “Fine.”

After that, he goes back to trying to move the empty water canister on the table across from him. He is not fruitful in his attempts. 

\---

Evan, like always, keeps his word.

Not only is Arthur given the ability to get out of bed without supervision—they disable the alarm on his bed and show him how to unhook the IV device from the wall—but the next morning, when Evan arrives for their daily sessions, he turns the brightness up in the room—to an almost blinding degree—and brings in a strange device. 

According to Evan, the device is called a “stereo,” and they can only bring it in while they have their session. It’s quite a shame, because as soon as it’s turned on Arthur’s first thought is that he would love to investigate it without supervision. 

Well, actually, his first thought is along the lines of “sorcery, get it away,” mostly as an old defense mechanism as a reaction to an age old equation of “loud,” “potential harm,” and “unknown.” It may or may not come with an extra side of “prejudice,” but Arthur is trying to work through that. 

His  _ second  _ thought, though, is that he would like to investigate it. 

Extraordinarily, it plays music without any visible source other than the device, itself. To say the least, it really throws Arthur for a loop at first, especially because the music playing is unlike anything he’s ever heard before. Arthur has travelled and heard music all throughout Camelot and many of the lands of Albion. He’s heard music so fast that it feels like it rips right through your skull, as well as music slow enough to lull you to sleep. This is somehow different.

It’s repetitive and sweet and pulses with instruments—which Arthur cannot make out—to the beat of his heart. The voice which accompanies them is quite nice, too, and once he gets past the shock of it, he comes to realize that he is quite fond of it. 

Evan must catch this in Arthur’s expression because he says, “You like it, huh? It really makes you want to get up and exercise, right?”

Arthur wouldn’t really say that but as the rhythm of the song picks up in tempo, so does his heartbeat. He suddenly feels like he has extra energy that he needs to expend. As soon as possible. 

“Who is the performer?” he asks. 

“This is Lady Gaga,” Evan says, “Are you a fan now, too?”

Arthur nods. He supposes he is. “Hey Daegal,” he calls out, “Do you like this Lady Gaga, too?”

Daegal hesitates for a moment, then says, “Yeah, I’m not even gonna lie, her music is pretty solid.”

Arthur doesn’t think that the corners of Evan’s smile can reach even further than they already are. 

\---

Freya is gone for a few more days. And as Arthur finds happiness in his gaining ability to overcome his surroundings, his worry for her grows as well. Daegal doesn’t say anything about it, but Arthur knows that he feels the same. He’s suspiciously quiet when she doesn’t come in each morning.

That along with no real advancement on the magic front, Arthur feels just…useless. 

It’s a strange feeling to have as a prisoner—a status that Arthur forgets each day. Maybe that’s why he’s so desperate to get out; he’s afraid that without sunlight, he’ll become paler than pale and meld in with the white walls here indefinitely. 

\---

“Hello,” Doctor Williams greets as he stands by the bottom of Arthur’s bed. He and his hoard are making their rounds as they do every day. Only, lately, the meetings are shorter and shorter, without much of anything needing to be reported in Arthur’s case. Just a quick in and out, usually no more than five minutes. 

Well, except now, because as soon as Arthur returns Doctor William’s greeting, the man sits down in the chair beside Arthur’s bed, looking quite serious. That’s not a good sign. 

“Arthur,” Doctor Williams says, smiling, “we see that you’re making really great progress here.”

“I think so too—"

“Really, so much that we feel you are rapidly approaching a time where you are just too healthy for us to take care of anymore.”

Arthur gives him a questioning look, feeling hesitant for some reason. Does this mean that they’ll let him go?

“Well, we believe that…” Doctor Williams grasps for the right words. “that you will soon no longer be in need of the services that we provide here at Mountainside General. We believe that soon, we can discharge you from those services.”

“Discharge?” Arthur asks slowly, “So, you’ll let me go?”

Doctor Williams looks to his horde, as though they’ll help him say what he has to next. Many of them look away, others give him a supportive smile, urging him to go on. Obviously, none of them make an attempt to switch places with the man. 

The situation puts Arthur on edge, and he feels his body grow tense. 

Doctor Williams turns back to Arthur. “You see, in your condition,” he says, gesturing to Arthur vaguely, “even if your body is healthy and even though you haven’t had an incident in a little while, according to your social worker, you do still believe that you are King Arthur.”

Arthur tries to interrupt him but stops when Doctor Williams holds a hand up. 

“Please, let me finish,” Doctor Williams says. “Unless you can really, really prove to us that this is not the case, we may have to transfer you to an institution. Just so they can help you work on that, so they can rehabilitate you.”

It’s like a punch to Arthur’s gut. Daegal was right, they’ll never let them out of here. They’ll just pass them on from one place to the next forever. Wherever he goes, he’ll be watched, analyzed, trapped. And all the goodwill he may have had towards the people in charge here, people like Doctor Williams—towards the idea that he might not have to plan, that they might just let him out— however miniscule it was, might as well fade away because they knew. They knew that this was going to be the case. Daegal knew, too, and tried to warn him. Maybe Arthur should have listened.  

Arthur almost snarls with rage but pulls back once he notices that the entire room is watching him, Doctor Williams, especially. The man is searching his face for something—any sign of danger, probably. Is this a set up? Do they want Arthur to get angry—to do something that would allow them to ship him off to another prison? He won’t let them. 

Arthur then summons something in himself, some sort of calm that washes over him. He’s angry, but it’s more of an awareness of it than an all-encompassing feeling. It’s a trick he used to use on the battlefield. Only, there, the emotion he wanted to quell was fear, instead. Anger, though, is often a welcome companion in combat. 

He makes his face blank and tries to focus on the fear. 

“Okay,” Arthur finally says, “I’ll do my best to show you that I’m not…him.”

Doctor Williams nods his head and turns away quickly. Arthur doesn’t know what the man is thinking, if he believes Arthur’s lies. 

They get up, moving on to Daegal’s side of the room. They just drop something like this on him and move on. 

Jack finds his way to Arthur’s side from the tail end of the hoard. He gives Arthur a pitiful look and then his eyes shoot away, ignoring Arthur. He then begins checking Arthur’s bandages, also this time without prompting, lifting up his blanket and getting to work. Arthur lets out a frustrated sigh, then lays back, and lets him. He feels exhausted. In more ways than one. 

Arthur spares a look towards Daegal’s silhouette and can faintly make out the boy nodding. He wonders if Daegal is getting the same news as Arthur did. 

“Your wound looks good, Arthur. “Jack says, bandaging him back up. “The doctor was right, you should be out of here, soon.”

Arthur spares a glance towards Jack, who seems satisfied. Arthur wonders why but is immediately reminded of the fact that Jack doesn’t want Arthur here, either. As long as he is, Jack has to cover for Freya. He probably wants the both of them out of here. That’s…petty. 

It does beg the question, though: is Freya is going to be gone for longer than they thought?

No, Arthur is probably just reading too much into it. Of course, he would want Arthur to get better. That’s what they all tell him. Even Freya and Evan—and he knows that they think that getting healthier for him is what’s best. 

Now, though, it means the opposite. For Arthur, it means that there’s a time limit for him. He has to figure out how to escape, and he has to figure it out soon. 

Doctor Williams and the hoard make their way out of the room, passing Arthur’s bed with hesitant waves and blank faces. Jack falls in line behind them, extracting something from his left back pocket as he does. The group leaves in a hurry and once they’re on the other side of the door, Arthur hears a click. 

That’s right. Arthur forgot—the nurses carry a key to the door. 

Well, that’s a start. 

\---

Arthur decides to take a different approach to this “healing” thing, now that he knows that as soon as they deem him fit, they’ll send him off. And while Arthur doesn’t want to make himself weaker on purpose, he also doesn’t want them to think that he’s getting stronger. He just needs to look like he’s taking more time to heal. He needs to buy more time to plan and yes, he know how ironic that sounds. 

So, when Evan finally offers him another chance to walk around the unit, Arthur does his best to toe the line of being apprehensive about it, while also accepting the offer. 

“Do you think that I’m ready?” Arthur asks. 

Evan claps him on the back, “Of course I do. We’ve been listening to music during our sessions and…” he looks around the room, squinting for emphasis. “it’s even a bit bright in here for  _ me _ .”

Arthur gives him a hesitant look. 

Listen, you’ve had a few days to get used to your lower dosage, you’re tolerating louder sounds and brighter lights. You got this, Arthur.” Evan offers him a comforting smile and Arthur can’t help but grin in return.

“Okay,” Arthur says, looking resolute. 

They go through the motions again of getting Arthur out of bed and then they’re slowly making their way to the door. It suddenly strikes Arthur that perhaps a walk like this could be the way for him to escape—and with an escort, nonetheless. 

Then, the soldier-man walks in from where he was presumably waiting outside. He eyes Arthur suspiciously, obviously wary of another “incident.”

Well, that plan is out, then. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. He wouldn’t have been able to take Daegal with him and even though Evan seems like a nice guy, Arthur doesn’t think that he would actually help Arthur escape. 

Arthur steadies himself in the face of the soldier-man, not wanting to look weak. Well, he wants to look physically weak to buy him more time here, but he’s still a knight through and through. If he doesn’t show some sort of strength—even just the tiniest bit—in the face of his opponent, then he won’t be worthy of them. 

They approach the open door and Arthur gears up for the pain, suddenly flashing back to his last venture into the unknown. “No sun glasses, are you sure?” Arthur asks, looking to Evan. He doesn’t have to pretend to be worried this time—he genuinely is. 

“I’m sure,” Evan assures him. He must catch Arthur’s sincerity because he is equally sincere in his response.

Before he can think better of it, Arthur takes a hesitant step forward past the threshold of the door and…

Nothing. 

No intense pain, no loud sounds, and no blinding lights. 

Arthur takes another step forward, a bit more confident this time. 

And he feels fine. His muscles are a little bit strained from standing for so long—let it be known that sometimes just standing can be worse than walking—but he doesn’t feel that terrible burn in his eyes, nor is the sound around him deafening like last time. It’s just…fine. 

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and suddenly, he begins to register his surroundings. He’s facing that wall opposite his door with the sizeable crack still in it, he can feel the cold floor beneath his feet, and he can hear…people. He can hear their footsteps all around him, far away and close—in this very hallway. 

He takes a step towards them. And another. And then another. 

Soon, he’s walking and with the help of Evan, he actually has somewhere to go. It’s a feeling that he didn’t know he was missing—the ability to walk until you reach somewhere new. 

He turns to the right in an attempt to walk down the hallway, all ideas of pretending to be weak out of the window in favor of new discoveries to be made. 

Suddenly, he is met with a collection of doors littered down the left side of the hallway. Are there more rooms? 

Are there more people being kept here? Just how many? 

Are any of his people being kept here? Could Merlin be kept here? 

A tiny voice in the back of his head says again that if Merlin were here, he would be the one to get them out. A slightly louder voice says that Merlin could be just as injured as Arthur, or worse. It’s a conversation that happens often in Arthur’s head. Either way, he won’t know unless he finds out for himself. 

He goes to open the first door on his right. 

Suddenly, he is all too aware the soldier-man accompanying him. He freezes in his place, not knowing what to do. In his periphery, he can see the man’s body tense, gearing up automatically in case there’s a threat. Arthur backs away from the door slowly, and the soldier-man relaxes. 

If his people are here—if Merlin is here—then they need his help, but he isn’t able to help them like this. Despite being able to walk, he is not as strong as he usually is, he has no weapons, and he is heavily outnumbered. He can barely save himself and Daegal, much less an unspecified number of Camelot citizens, if they even are here. 

If they are, he’ll have to come back for them. 

“Arthur,” Evan says, breaking Arthur from his thoughts, “Do you want to see the common area?”

“Common area?” Arthur asks.

“It’s where people go to hang out, play games, chat. You know, just to get out of their rooms and move a little.”

So, there are other people here. And they’re kept in this “common area,” apparently.

If any of his people are here, at least a few of them would have to be there, right? 

“Okay,” he responds, and Evan immediately has him moving. On their way, Arthur tries to keep calm. In the meantime, he can attempt to accomplish what he originally set out to do here: cataloguing the area, looking for exits.

For the most part, they only pass bare wooden doors and white walls with little to no variation. It’s nothing of consequence, really. 

Finally, the walls bend to the left and they curve to accommodate to it. At the end of the curve is a little, carved out blank space. It’s filled with an enormous table, quite a couple of odd chairs, and about five people all dressed like Jack and Freya—they must be nurses. 

Arthur even recognizes a few of them from the days when Freya isn’t here. The nurses wave somewhat enthusiastically, probably happy to see Arthur up and getting better. 

Arthur offers them a small smile in return and keeps walking. 

As his group approaches what Arthur deems to be the “common area,” which appears to be a wide, open space at the end of the unit, Arthur realizes that his legs are getting to be a bit tired. Maybe he doesn’t have as much endurance as he thought he did. 

“Could we sit for a bit?” Arthur asks Evan. 

“Of course,” Evan replies, automatically maneuvering Arthur towards the nearest chair within the common area. Arthur sits and his body immediately relaxes, the pain soon becoming phantom and disappearing. While he recovers, he takes a moment to scope out the area.

It’s filled with people—none that Arthur recognizes—but it’s not too crowded. Some have IV devices, some don’t. And some are wearing the soft, pale outfits that Arthur has been made to wear ever since he got here, while others are wearing outfits more akin to the nurses here. A few, though, are wearing quite strange clothes with quite strange fabrics—definitely nothing like what people wear in Albion. It only adds to his collection of oddities that he cannot explain or designate to a certain known area. 

He takes a moment to register just how foreign this place to him, just how baffling. 

Even so, Arthur does recognize that just being here in this room with some semblance of freedom, is something he’s thankful for. In this moment, he feels happy. It’s a reluctant happiness—one borne out of a mindset of a prisoner who hasn’t seen the light in weeks now—but a happiness, nonetheless. Arthur takes a moment to just feel it, without the negative attachments. 

Suddenly, something catches the corner of his eye—movement. A nurse walks past the common room, puts a thick piece of paper to the wall and walks through a set of large doors, which open in front of her. 

It occurs to him, suddenly, that he could leave right now if he wanted to. The paper she used seemed to interact with the doors and if one of the nurses has it, it’s possible all of them do.  All he would have to do is get a piece of paper and he could be out of here. 

Before he can ponder this further, someone starts screaming. 

It alarms everyone in the room, including Arthur. Head’s swivel back and forth, trying to figure out where it’s coming from.  

Arthur is the first one to find it. 

Suddenly, all thoughts of escape leave him, immediately. Really, all thoughts of anything leave him, except for one:

Daegal.

And before he knows it, he’s out of his chair. 

He rips the IV out of his arm to disconnect him from the device; he can’t have it holding him back. He dodges the hands which try to keep him in place—with his sight and no distractions, he is able to make use of the avoidance maneuvers he’s used as a knight. 

However, this doesn’t really work for the soldier-man, who grabs him by his shoulders and pulls him back to his chest. Arthur struggles to break free, feelings of anger and fear rushing through him as pure energy, pure emotion. 

The room begins to rumble again. 

“Aftershock!” someone nearby screams, and Arthur uses the distraction to his benefit, taking hold of the arms that bind him and pulling them off and pushing behind him. 

The soldier flies behind him, much further than he should. Arthur doesn’t have time to dwell on that, though. 

He sprints down the hallway towards his room, legs screaming at him to stop, to slow down but he doesn’t care. He just runs faster, leaving chaos in his wake. Heavy footsteps follow him, but he can’t slow down now. He has to get back to Daegal before they hurt him more. He needs to save the kid. 

As he approaches the room, where the door still remains open, he briefly registers the crack in the wall. It’s getting bigger. 

He swiftly crosses the threshold—room shaking, and without thinking he breaches the curtains. 

“What are you doing to him? Get away!” he screams. The room pulses with energy, the curtains flying every which way like they’re caught in a storm. 

The screaming stops, as does Jack from where he’s attending to Daegal’s wounds. 

And Arthur may have underestimated the severity of Daegal’s condition. The wounds—both healed and unhealed alike—travel up his body like licks of flame. 

Burns. They’re burns. And they’re almost everywhere. 

He catches Daegal’s eyes. Arthur was right, he looks so young. 

“Look away!” Daegal exclaims suddenly, sounding desperate. Arthur obeys immediately, turning his head. 

His eyes fall on the window and he briefly glimpse the strange structures before him, the strange moving objects below him. 

Where is he?

Then someone is grabbing him from behind and he blacks out.  

\---

Arthur dreams again. It’s the same one from before, only he’s watching the events unfold from a different angle this time. He’s standing behind the figure running down the hill to greet his body. He can’t make out their face. But this time, he can see their feet, clear as day. 

They’re wearing weird shoes and by the time they reach his body, they’re covered in dirt. 

Then, everything goes as it usually does. 

Only, about half a second before it ends and Arthur wakes up, he swears that he can see another figure in the corner of his eye, also watching. 

He just writes it off as just a trick of the mind—just another weird part of an already weird dream. 

\---

Arthur wakes up with a strange sensation in his hands. It’s like he’s holding something, but not. It dips in between his fingers and rolls across his palms.

When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t see anything there, but he still _ feels _ it. It’s warm and alive and continuously moving, like a force of energy that needs to be exerted but can’t be.

He tries to focus on it but is distracted by a smooth hand covering his and the force dissipates.

“Arthur, are you awake?” Freya asks, from where she’s sitting beside his bed.

“Freya,” he says absently, still a bit foggy from sleep and whatever drugs they gave him. “You’re here.”

“Arthur, I need you to listen to me  _ very _ closely,” she says, serious tone unwavering.

That sobers him a bit. “Okay, I’m listening.”

 “We’re leaving—the three of us. You, me, and Daegal.”

“What? When?”

“Tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I am @arthurandhisswordbros on tumblr if you wanna check me out.


	5. The Window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the lovely simthemuse (@ninjahijabimuse on tumblr)!

When Arthur wakes up again, he’s in chains. His hands are strapped to the side railings of the bed like they were when he first woke up in this room a few weeks ago.

Arthur lets out a sigh. It’s not a very surprising development.

Unable to rub the sleep from his eyes, he sits and waits for the grogginess to wear off by itself. When it does, he takes in the state of the room.

It’s late in the afternoon, if the dimming lights that paint the walls are to be believed. It’s most likely only been a few hours since he created another earthquake with his magic—maybe three or four. It’s been far fewer since Freya came back, since she told him that she was going to get him out of here.

She wasn’t there for long, didn’t use specifics, and left without a word as of how they were _actually_ going to do it. “We’re a little strapped for time, right now, but I need you to trust me and wait for my signal. I’ll be back, I promise,” she said.

Arthur remembers searching her eyes, her face, for something insincere or dishonest.

He didn’t find it, so he was inclined to believe her.

And it’s not just that. Even though they’ve had their differences, Freya has never outwardly betrayed Arthur. Really, she’s protected him more than she’s had to, perhaps to her own detriment.

He still remembers how it felt to watch her cry—to watch her break down after his last incident. It was like the weight of the world collapsed on her.

And he wasn’t very proud of adding his stock to it.

But she’s back, now, and she’s going to help him. More importantly, though, she’s going to help Daegal.

Speaking of.

“Daegal,” Arthur calls out. Nothing. He tries again, only to the same result.

He turns his head, trying to catch sight of the boy through the drawn curtain, but even with the minimal light from the sun, the room is too dark for him to see anything. Arthur doesn’t hear any breathing other than his own, so he assumes that Daegal’s not there.

It’s…worrying, especially after what happened earlier.

Arthur takes a closer look around the room. It still looks intact, but just about everything that had a place on a table, cabinet, or wall is strewn about the place, washed up from the storm he created.

Who knows? They might have moved Daegal to punish him. Or maybe they did it for Daegal’s “safety.”

Arthur can’t help but feel uneasy at the thought. If safety was something that could exist here, would Daegal really be able to have it? With the way he was screaming, Arthur would venture to think otherwise. He shudders just thinking about it.

And the burns.

How _did_ he get those burns? Daegal said something about ending up here by saving—or, at least trying to save—someone he loves. It must have been a cost that he had to pay for with fire.

Arthur shakes his head. It’s none of his business. He told himself—and Daegal in no uncertain terms—that he would respect his privacy. Arthur holds himself to that.

What he really needs to focus on now is getting out of here and getting himself and Daegal out of the hands of these monsters. And when they _are_ out, if the time and situation is right, Arthur will ask him about the burns.

Until then, Arthur figures that all he can do right now is wait—wait for something to happen.

Anything, really.

His fingers tap the bed frantically. Anytime now.

\---

Arthur isn’t very good at waiting and doing nothing, so when something actually _does_ happen, he’s nearly chomping at the bit.

He’s mentally halfway through a scenario which involves him gnawing off his restraints when the door unlocks, opens and Doctor Williams makes his way into the dark room. This time, he has a significantly smaller-sized horde in tow—only about three or four additional people. One of them, to Arthur’s surprise, is Evan.

Doctor Williams immediately takes the seat at Arthur’s bedside, levelling Arthur with a stern, disapproving face. It almost reminds Arthur of his father, although Arthur knows that Doctor Williams couldn’t hold a candle to the kind of fury that Uther could inflict. Therefore, it is to be assumed that Arthur does not feel chastised by him.

“So, that whole...event was not optimal. You know that right?” Doctor Williams asks.

“Yes,” Arthur confirms. There’s no getting around it. He gears up for a speech, more out of annoyance than any type of fear. Arthur _does_ find that some part of himself is happy that his magic has graduated from an “incident” to an “event.” It’s a real testament to his abilities.

“You took the opportunity to make a run for it, you assaulted a security guard, and you not-so-subtly threatened your nurse. And all in the middle of an earthquake,” Doctor Williams continues. The way he lists it makes it seem like he’s praising Arthur for his accomplishments.

Although, Arthur _is_ a bit offended. He thought that his threat toward Jack was pretty clear.

“Um, actually,” Evan calls out, timidly, “Arthur didn’t assault the security guard.”

“What?” Doctor Williams asks, turning around to face Evan. He gives him a confused look, from what Arthur can see. He’s probably wondering why Evan is here, just like Arthur is.

“The guy tripped. I saw it happen. He just let go of Arthur so as not to take him down with him.”

Arthur’s eyes find Evan’s, searching. He finds a knowing look. Is Evan lying for him? Why would he do that? Does he know? Or is he just willing to explain away Arthur’s magic like Freya was.

“So, he lost his footing…and then jumped back and…flew across the room?” Doctor Williams levels him with an unimpressed look.

“Doctor Williams, and I mean no offense by saying this, but what is more likely—an injured man who is recovering from a stab wound pushing someone across or a _natural disaster_ causing someone to trip and someone else overexaggerating about the distance they fell?” Evan looks pointedly at the horde and one man deflates, most likely being the source of said embellishments.

Doctor Williams doesn’t look like he believes Evan, but he probably doesn’t want to push the matter for fear he might look stupid. In Arthur’s humble opinion, the man is eons past that.

“Either way,” Doctor Williams says, turning back to address Arthur, “You _did_ run, correct?”

“Yeah, he did do that,” Evan chimes in. Doctor Williams ignores him, taking a deep breath. Arthur almost has to fight the urge to smile.

Doctor Williams looks to Arthur for an answer, anyway, and Arthur nods.

“So, you understand that that decision needs to have repercussions, right?” Doctor Williams asks rhetorically.

“Yes,” Arthur says, mostly just to shut him up. He’s honestly just so done with this guy.

And he gets it, Doctor Williams thinks he’s helping him, thinks that Arthur can’t take care of himself and needs someone to take control, instead. That is _not_ the case, and if Doctor Williams ever thought that it was, Arthur would like to rectify that.

“Although, what I _don’t_ understand is why your nurses, here, are so dead set on hurting innocent people,” Arthur continues.

Doctor Williams settles back into his chair. He started to get up when Arthur first answered him, most likely thinking they were done here. His expression is mostly filled with confusion as well as with just a touch of shock. “Daegal wasn’t in any actual danger, Arthur. Jack was just changing his bandages.”

“Then why was Daegal screaming?” Arthur asks, challenging. “And why didn’t Jack stop when he heard it?”

“Because bandage changes can be quite uncomfortable, especially when you’re getting used to lower doses of pain medicine, as you are most likely already aware of. Jack was just following standard procedure to make sure that the wounds didn’t get infected.”

“Okay,” Arthur says, calmly, “then was it _standard procedure_ to remove all of Daegal’s bandages when he was only cleaning one area at a time? Seems to me, exposing _unhealed_ wounds to the elements isn’t very good for protecting against infection.”

Doctor Williams freezes, briefly, then forcibly relaxes himself.

“I will make sure to have a conversation with Jack, then, and we’ll get it straightened out.” It’s an empty promise, only something to say to quell the commotion that has risen amongst the people behind Doctor Williams. They turn to each other, shooting questioning looks amongst themselves.

“Sure, you will.” Arthur doesn’t hide his disbelieve. Really, he doesn’t plan on hiding anything anymore. He’s getting out of here and even if he weren’t, he doubts that the doctor will follow him to wherever they’re planning on sending him.

“Arthur,” the man finally snaps, “I am trying...” he trails off for a second, then lets out a beleaguered sigh. “I am _doing_ my best here to make sure that you get the care you need. And maybe I’ve failed on some level, because you—your actions right now and over the past few weeks—have made it abundantly clear that you are not fit to be in this section of Mountainside General, anymore. Frankly, you are just too caught up in your delusions, and in as such are a potential danger to yourself, as well as to the people around you. And I don’t think I can help you anymore than I have.”

“Delusions?” Arthur scoffs. “I hear someone scream and somehow I’m deluded for trying to rescue them?”

“No, you’re deluded in thinking that running away during an earthquake is the right thing to do. You are deluded in thinking that Daegal needed to be rescued in the first place. You are _deluded_ in thinking that—even if he was in danger—that you would be the person to stop it.”

“And why couldn’t I? It’s my job!” Arthur says.

“It most certainly _is not_ . You are _not_ King Arthur,” Doctor Williams is almost shouting at this point and Arthur is sure that he would keep going if he could, but he stops himself. They have an audience. Arthur spares a look towards the others. They look uncomfortable. Arthur switches his gaze back to Doctor Williams.

The man looks…embarrassed, and ashamed. Of what? Of Arthur?

“What do you _mean_ I’m not? Of course, I am! Who _else_ would I be?” Arthur says.

“Just a John Doe with amnesia and a particularly odd psychosis,” Doctor Williams says softly, sounding drained. And what right does he have to feel that way? What right does he have to always act like Arthur isn’t even human? To lock him up, chain him to a bed, and to tell him that everything he knows is a lie? “You see, King Arthur of Albion died—”

“But I didn’t! I’m right here,” Arthur sounds desperate to his own ears.

Doctor Williams waits for Arthur to finish before saying anything. “Arthur Pendragon died over a thousand years ago. So, you see, you could not possibly be him.” He says it so solidly, so matter-of-factly, punctuating each word like a punch.

And no one in the room stirs. Nobody jumps to correct him. Arthur looks to Evan, who keeps his face blank, cold.

No. He doesn’t believe it. He would _never_ believe it, especially not from these people. They’re just trying to mess him up, to make him go truly and completely mad. They want to make him into a fool just to get something out of him, or out of Camelot. It’s a war tactic—convince your captive that they’re insane so that they’ll give up something you need.

And maybe Arthur _is_ going insane—maybe he has been for a while now—but he won’t succumb to them.

He will show _strength_ like a king is _supposed_ to.

Arthur turns his gaze back to Doctor Williams, who looks at him sympathetically. It makes Arthur seethe with rage.

“I don’t believe you,” Arthur says through gritted teeth. He realizes now that he’s sitting up, advancing as far as his restraints will let him. It’s outwardly aggressive, hostile.

Arthur must look every bit the monster they want him to be, inhuman and vicious and raving mad.

Doctor Williams just looks sad. Not threatened or scared, but sad. He feels bad for Arthur. Why?

“Arthur,” Doctor Williams says, “As I have stated before, it seems that the care you need isn’t the kind that I can provide for you. So, officially, we are going to have to place you in a psychiatric institution. They will hopefully provide you with what you need. Do you understand?”

Arthur settles back into the bed, not wanting to expend anymore unnecessary energy on Doctor Williams and his horde. “Yes, I understand.” It doesn’t matter anyway; he’s getting out of here.

Doctor Williams nods and gets up. “Well, then, that is all, I suppose. We’ll put your transfer in for our internal psychiatric facility tomorrow morning and they’ll decide where you go next. The paperwork shouldn’t take too long.” He looks at Arthur pointedly, waiting for an answer.

Arthur nods and the man continues.

“In the meantime, we’re going to have to keep you restrained and under supervision. We obviously can’t trust you, so…” He trails off, not knowing how to finish, then looks to a woman behind him. “Can we get someone in here to watch him, please?”

Wait. Watch him? Aren’t the restraints and locked doors enough? How is he going to get out of here with someone watching him? And _where_ is Freya?

“The next PCA doesn’t come in until seven,” she says.

“I’ll watch him, for now,” Evan pipes in. “Technically, we didn’t get to finish our session.” He gives a wry smile, the one that he always gives. Only, his eyes hold something deeper—more complex. Maybe that’s why Doctor Williams agrees with him. Or, maybe the man just wants to get out of here as soon as possible.

“Okay,” he says, “but only until the PCA gets here.”

Evan nods and that’s that. Everyone else seems to take some invisible cue and begins to head out. Doctor Williams trails behind, seemingly hesitant to look at Arthur. Perhaps it’s out of shame or embarrassment or pity—Arthur doesn’t know, but the man only gives him a wave and a small goodbye and then walks out with the others.

It’s a goodbye that leaves Arthur feeling conflicted and he doesn’t know why. The man is lying to him, has kept him trapped for weeks on end. And even though he may have believed that he really _was_ helping Arthur, he was really doing the opposite.

So why does Arthur almost feel bad for the guy?

“Arthur,” Evan calls, sitting down in the chair. He shakes Arthur from his thoughts and Arthur is glad for it.

“Hey, Evan.” Arthur gives him a smile and reclines back as far as the bed will allow. He’s still so tired.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Where’s Daegal?”

“He’s okay. He’s in another room, sleeping away his troubles. They gave him a lot of pain meds after what happened. He went out like a light right after.”

Arthur lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “What are you even doing here, anyway?”

“I didn’t want them to jump on you. If you assaulted an officer, they could send you to somewhere really nasty. You don’t deserve that.” Evan gives him an empathetic look. 

“Thanks, Evan,” Arthur says sincerely, then drops his gaze to his lap. “Did you really see what happened with the officer?”

A pause.

“I don’t know what I saw. It could have been the earthquake; it could have not been. I don’t know,” Evan says simply. Arthur razes his gaze back up to meet Evan’s. The man’s eyes are full of a strange type of sincerity and earnestness—the type with no frills, the type that doesn’t make a big deal out of itself. He’s not pushing for the truth because he doesn’t need to know. In fact, it’s probably best, for the both of them, if he doesn’t. Arthur doesn’t want to implicate him in whatever happens tonight. He’s a good guy and he’s helped Arthur out several times now.

“One may never know, right?” Arthur says, just as simply.

Evan smiles then suddenly seems to remember something. “Hey, wait,” he says, reaching through his bag. “Here, I want you to have this.” He pulls out his blue rubber band. “You still have some work to do in terms of getting back to your baseline.”

“But you said that it was your last one,” Arthur says.

“Yeah, but I can always go buy more. I’m just lazy. Here,” Evan says, offering the band to Arthur, putting it on the bed by his legs. “Maybe when you get done going through…what you’re going to go through, you can return it to me.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, “Maybe.”

It’s a lie and they both know it. Arthur never plans on coming back here.

Arthur gives him a bittersweet smile. He almost wishes that he could take Evan with him, too.

The man would probably make a good knight.

\---

It’s only about a half an hour before someone arrives.

“Right on time,” Evan states, like he always does.

Freya walks in. “Hey, Evan,” she greets. Her voice sounds bright, but Arthur knows that she’s not very happy to see him here.

“Freya! What are you doing here?” Evan, on the other hand, _is_ happy to see her.

“I’m covering for Jack. They sent him home after…you know.” She looks at Arthur pointedly. For some reason, it’s _this_ moment that he feels properly chastised. He sinks into the bed a little more.

“Yeah, it was a pretty crazy day, here. I’m glad you’re back, though. Are you feeling any better?”

“Much better,” she says, with a closed-mouth smile. She’s lying. Was she really sick, then?

Upon closer inspection, she does look a little pale. She also looks like she lost weight—not much, but enough to notice. Mostly, though, she just looks tired.

Arthur can relate.

If Evan notices anything off about her expression, too, he doesn’t say so. “I thought you were the PCA. They’re due in about,” he pauses to look at his wrist, “thirty minutes or so.”

“PCA?” Freya asks, looking confused.

“Yeah, the doc ordered for him to be ‘under supervision’ until his transfer tomorrow. You didn’t hear? That’s strange,” Evan says, a hint of suspicion painting his features.

“No, I did,” Freya quickly recovers, “I just didn’t think that they would get a _PCA_ to do it. Why not a security guard?”

“What’s a PCA?” Arthur chimes in.

“He didn’t cause _that_ much trouble. He just made a run for it,” Evan says, but he’s nodding, accepting Freya’s answer.

“Oh, well, the nurses at the station must have overexaggerated, then.” She pauses and gives Evan a sympathetic look. “Either way, I bet you’re exhausted after all of that. And I know for a fact that you were supposed to leave hours ago. I’ll watch Arthur until the PCA gets here. You should get some rest.”

She says it with such sincerity that Arthur can’t help but believe her, even though he knows better. He just hopes that Evan feels the same.

“Are you sure?” Evan says, looking a bit apprehensive.

“Of course! And if I’m being honest with you,” Freya says, leaning in like she’s telling him a big secret. Arthur may or may not panic for the briefest of moments. “I missed this weirdo. I just want to talk to him about a few things. You know, to catch up before he leaves?” She says it like Arthur can’t hear her, pointing at him from over her shoulder.

Evan laughs, then puts his hand up to block his mouth from Arthur’s view. “I’m going to miss him, too.”

They both laugh and it would probably be a genuinely cute moment—Arthur is flattered, really—but he and Freya are kind of strapped for time here. They only have a brief window where Arthur isn’t being watched to do…whatever she has planned. So, Evan needs to leave. Now.

“You should probably get going, Evan. You’ve been here for long enough, today. Maybe I can see you tomorrow if you get here early,” Arthur lies.

“Yeah,” Evan lies, too. He knows that there’s no way they’ll be able to see each other in the morning. Doctor Williams will probably have Arthur out of here before it’s even light outside. “Maybe.”

He gives Arthur a searching look and Arthur can still see the apprehension in his eyes. Whatever he sees, though, it must be enough. Enough for him to know that Arthur is safe and maybe enough to know that he’ll be okay, wherever he goes.

Evan starts to get up, making his way to the door. He “I’ll see you around, Arthur,” he says finally, then leaves.

Before the door even clicks to a close, Freya is by his side. “A PCA is a Patient Care Assistant. It’s like a nurse, but without as many responsibilities,” Freya answers his previous question.

“I don’t care. Untie me, now.”

She doesn’t even respond, just gets to work loosening the restraint on his left arm. “Don’t rip out your IV. It’ll just make noise.”

“They never gave me a new one after the incident.”

“They were probably going to start you on pills tonight.” She doesn’t even pause, already knowing he’s going to ask about it. “Pills are another way to take medicine without an IV.” She frees the right arm, moving down to the feet. He tries to unfasten the restraint on his left arm, but its tied under the bed and he can’t reach. Instead, he sets to work disarming the bed’s alarm.

“Well, maybe I don’t need them. I feel fine now.”

“It’ll fade,” she says, finally freeing his left leg.

Suddenly, there’s a bit of a commotion outside. Footsteps.

“Forget the foot. Get my other arm and get down,” Arthur commands quietly. Freya obeys immediately, taking cover behind the bed on Arthur’s right side. Arthur quickly tucks his free hand and foot under the covers, taking the restraints with him. Whoever is at the door can’t see that he’s almost free.

The door opens, and…it’s Jack.

So, Freya lied about coming in on his behalf. He would send her a scornful look, but he doesn’t want to clue Jack in on the fact that she’s there.

“Jack. How are you?” Arthur says.

Arthur needs to get him out of here.

“Arthur, I heard you said about me to Doctor Williams and—”

“That’s great. Speaking of Doctor Williams, do you think you could go and get him for me? I have a question to ask him.”

“No, Arthur. This is between _you_ and _me_ ,” he approaches the bed and Freya sinks down further, still working on his right arm. Arthur sits up in an attempt to block Jack’s view of her.

“Okay. Tell me what’s on your mind,” Arthur says. If he can’t get Jack out of here, he can at least stall until Freya finishes. For all of Arthur’s talk, he doesn’t actually want to hurt the man, but he will if he has to.

“I just wanted you to know that I would never hurt Daegal. I promise. I can be a bit petty and maybe overdramatic sometimes, but I would _never_ do something like that.” Jack’s tone is soft—softer than Arthur has ever heard from him.

“Okay. I believe you,” Arthur says—and the strange thing is, he actually does, but this _really_ isn’t the time to do this. “I believe you. And I’m sorry for saying those things to Doctor Williams. If you go get him, I’ll say that I was wrong.”

Jack looks pleased and approaches the bed, perhaps to shake Arthur’s hand or give him a pat on the arm. “I’m glad you said—"

Suddenly, he catches sight of Freya. His eyes go wide and he stands stock still. Then, he turns, looking like he’s going to run, or shout, or do something that could make things so much harder for them.

Freya loosens Arthur’s restraint just in time and Arthur doesn’t think. He jumps halfway off of the bed, right leg still attached, and takes hold of Jack. They can’t afford him starting trouble. They need to slip out of here as fast and as quietly as they can.

Freya quickly gets to work unfastening Arthur’s right leg.

Arthur puts his hand on top of Jack’s mouth to quiet him, dragging him back to the bed with a firm grip on his shoulder.

He lies back down, pulling Jack on top of him so that they’re chest to back. Arthur wraps his other arm around the man’s neck, trying to get him into a lock. He uses his forearm and bicep to press down on Jack’s carotid arteries, sparing his throat. He wants to knock the man out, not kill him.

Jack struggles, trying to kick Arthur, elbow him, and yell, but it’s all fruitless.

Arthur is a seasoned knight and he’s got him.

Arthur wraps his left leg around Jack to restrain his feet, using his whole body to trap him.

“Only for a few seconds, Arthur,” Freya sounds panicked, but her voice is steady. “If you cut off his blood flow for too long he could have brain damage.”

“I got this Freya,” Arthur says, still struggling with Jack. He counts off six more seconds and Jack goes limp. Arthur lets go of him.

Freya finally finishes with his leg and Arthur has all four limbs free.

He turns on his side, moving Jack off of him. Jack slips down onto the bed.

“Are you okay?” Arthur asks Freya, breathing hard.

Freya just stares blankly at Jack’s limp form.

“Freya?” he calls, a little bit louder. That gets her attention.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.” She says, startling. She shakes herself a little and begins helping Arthur lift himself out of bed.

“What now?” Arthur asks, feet hitting the floor. He quickly has to adjust himself to carrying all this new weight.

“I don’t know. I didn’t plan for this.” Her tone is accusing.

“Freya—”

“I know,” she snaps, then runs a hand across her face. “Okay. First, tie him up.” She ducks down to the floor and reaches for something—a bag—and places it on the bed.

“What’s that for?” Arthur asks, fitting both of Jack’s hands into one of the restraints. He ducks down to the floor, stiff muscles protesting as he does, and begins to fasten the ties to the railing under the bed.

“I brought you some clothes,” she says, pulling them out and onto the bed.

“When did you put that there?”

“When I visited you earlier. Are you almost done with that?” she says, pointedly looking at the restraints.

“One minute,” he says. “What about _his_ clothes?”

“You want to wear his clothes? Why?” Freya asks incredulously.

“To blend in.” Arthur finishes tying the restraints. “Done.”

Freya pauses for a minute, finished emptying the bag. “Arthur, first of all, people—especially nurses—are probably going to recognize you even more if you’re wearing a nurse’s uniform and they haven’t heard of a new hire. Nurses know everything. Secondly, we’ve already broken quite a few laws tonight and we’re about to break several more. I don’t want to add any more if I can help it.” Her tone is accusing, again, but Arthur decides to let it go. She’s just stressed.

She passes him the clothes and he sorts through them. They look like the strange outfits the people in the lobby were wearing.

Arthur lifts up a particularly peculiar object—it’s circular, with a stiff, curved lip coming out from it. There’s a simple, embroidered image on the circular part—that of a stylized crown with a sword going straight down the middle. The tip of the blade perfectly lines up with the middle spike of the crown and there are snakes circling the hilt.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a cap—a type of hat. Now, quickly, put the rest of these on.” She shoves the rest of the items into his arms.

He pauses, frowning.

“Yeah, just go behind the curtain. I’ll keep watch. And keep low in front of the window.”

He nods and takes his bundle to the other side of the room. He lays everything down on the bed and quickly changes, pulling odd fabrics over his skin. The pants, in particular, are very strange, being made up of odd, almost rough material. Despite this, they fit him surprisingly well and feel nice to move in.

He places his old clothes down on the bed, ready to go, but something catches his eye—a flicker of light. It reflects off of the railing’s metal, stark in the darkness of Daegal’s side of the room—without him here, there’s no need to keep the lights on.

Arthur turns around, trying to find the light source.

It seems to be shining through the thin fabric of the curtains covering the window. Upon further inspection, it seems that there are hundreds of little lights, twinkling like stars in the skies. Only, they’re on the ground, instead.

He almost pushes the curtains back to take a better look—his curiosity growing stronger than his instinct to not be seen—even through a window—and to get out of this room.

“Are you almost done? We need to get going,” Freya calls out from the other side of the room, voice sounding anxious. Artur shakes his head and turns away from the window.

“Yeah, I just can’t figure out this ‘cap’ thing. How do you put it on?” he calls back.

“Here, I’ll show you,” she says. Arthur makes his way back over, approaching her by the bed. “Pull back your hair.”

He does as instructed. She takes the cap and puts it on with the lip hovering over his face.

“When you walk, keep your head a bit down like this.” She moves his head down so that he’s looking at her stomach. “That way, people won’t be able to recognize your face. And you can’t look injured either. If anyone asks, you’re just visiting your cousins. If they don’t notice it’s you, the worst they can do is ask you to leave because it’s past visiting hours. Okay?”

“Okay,” Arthur confirms.  

She pauses, then gives him a once-over. “You know, this suits you pretty well.”

“Freya,” he says exasperatedly.

“I know, I know,” she says. She turns around and starts to cover Jack with blankets from the bed, looking at the man, pensively. “Maybe they’ll just think that he’s you and that you’re sleeping or something.”

“If he doesn’t wake up.” Arthur turns on the bed’s alarm system. Freya gives him a questioning look. “Just in case he gets out, we’ll know.”

Freya nods. And they stand there for a few moments, knowing that they’re running out of time, but also knowing that what they’re going to try to accomplish will be hard and…it might not work.

So, they give themselves a few seconds, just to take it all in.

Freya recovers before Arthur, sucking in a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. “Okay, so here’s the plan: you need to get to room H105. It’s where Daegal is staying. I put a wheelchair in there earlier, while he was still asleep. Just ask him and he’ll tell you how to use it. Get him loaded up into it and I’ll come get you in ten.”

“Wait, you’re not coming with me?”

“No, I have to distract the nurses as you walk by. Also, me walking through the unit with a man who has a striking resemblance to a patient of mine—one who has recently been declared unstable—is not very covert.”

Well, she has a point, but it’s risky. In all of Arthur’s days in combat, splitting up is usually a death sentence. Sure, it works for when you are leading an ambush, a decoy mission, or are on a hunt, but that is when you are on the _offensive_ . Right now, they are on the _defensive_. It’s a whole other world.

“Trust me, Arthur,” Freya says. She’s always so good at reading him. “This is the best plan we’ve got. Okay?”

She’s right. If they don’t want anyone else to end up like Jack, here, it _is_ the best they can do.

“Okay,” he says, giving her a small, but hopefully reassuring smile. She smiles back, then wraps her arms around him in a warm embrace. It’s not the only physical contact he’s had since he’s been here, but it’s the perhaps only one initiated not because of duty or a job to be done, but because she actually cares about him. Arthur revels in it for longer than he should, wrapping his arms around her, as well. 

“Okay,” she says one last time. She lets go of him, backing off to look him in the eye. “And remember, don’t make eye contact with anyone, just look forward with your head down.”

Then, she heads out, taking her bag with her and Arthur is left with a sense of dread filling up in his chest.

He looks at Jack’s body on the bed. “Sorry,” he says, then picks up the rubber band Evan gave him, stuffing it one of the compartments on his new pair of trousers.

He doesn’t know if he’ll see Evan again. Really, he doesn’t know if Freya’s plan will work and if he’ll get out, but he does know that if he can, he’ll try to return the rubber band to Evan.

\---

Once Arthur is sure that the coast is clear, he ventures out, letting the door slip closed quietly behind him. Upon his entrance into the hallway, he immediately notices the crack in the wall across from his room. There are long, thin lines of yellow paper stretched out across it that say, “caution.”

He walks around it, giving it a wide berth—it must be structurally unsound at this point—and begins to journey to his destination. He’s supposed to find room H105.

He checks back. His room is H122 and the next one on the left is H120, so they must go in descending order towards the common area.

Arthur stops for a second and turns around. There are so many rooms here—he’s in room H122, and there are far more going down the hall on the right.

Could Merlin really be here? If he were, he would be in one of these rooms, right? Trapped like Arthur.

And Arthur is free right now—really, truly free for the first time in weeks. He could look for him.

Arthur stares longingly at long expanse of rooms, then shakes his head.

No, he said that he would come back for him, come back for anyone who might be trapped here. Right now, he needs to focus on Daegal—on getting out. Freya said that she would come and get him in ten minutes. Who knows how much time he’s wasted already?

Arthur resumes walking, counting down room numbers as he goes.

If they’re here, he’ll come back for them—strong and ready to fight.

Before he even comes across the nurse’s station—the little carved out place from before—he hears a chorus of uproarious laughter. Freya must be doing her job, then. Arthur has pity for anyone trying to sleep in this section.

Suddenly, someone is walking down the hall in the opposite direction as him. He passes them easily, following Freya’s orders and not looking up or making eye contact, but stops once he notices that there is no room H105. Or, at least, it’s not in this section. It just goes from H106 to H104.

“Can I help you?” a female voice calls out from behind him—the person he just passed. Arthur briefly glances at her, then tilts his head down. She’s wearing the same kind of outfit as Freya, but instead of bright, dynamic colors, hers consists of a simple, pale blue with little to no variation.

“No thank you,” Arthur says, and then starts walking.

“If you’re looking for an odd numbered room, they’re across the hallway. And I wouldn’t be spotted if I were you.”

Arthur stops short, body growing tense. Does she know? Has he been caught?

“Visiting hours were over at four. You could get in trouble,” she finishes. Arthur relaxes and continues to walk. He does lift a hand up as a thank you, though.

Room H106 is almost down by the common area, which means that if H105 is on the other side, his quickest bet is to cross right here. His best bet for not being seen is to go back around the other way. The unit is like one big circle, from what Arthur’s seen. So, he could do it, he just has to be quick.

He deliberates for a moment but decides to circle the unit. He _really_ can’t risk being seen.

He heads back in the other direction towards his room, picking up his pace. His legs, already growing weary from all of walking and standing he’s done so far, are beginning to burn. He doesn’t let up, though. He can’t afford to—he’s running out of time.

He passes the woman who helped him again, and she offers him a quiet, “You’re welcome,” as he does. He rushes to the end of the hallway, turning right until he reaches the next long stretch to Daegal’s room. There is no one in sight all the way down, so he’s in the clear.

It goes pretty smoothly from there—surprisingly smoothly. He passes the nurse’s station without being noticed—there’s another burst of loud laughter to cover him as he does—and he finds room H105 easily.

Maybe he shouldn’t have doubted Freya.

Arthur slips into the room, wondering if Daegal is still asleep like Evan said.

“Arthur,” Daegal calls out weakly. Well, that answers that question then.

“Daegal,” Arthur calls back, surprised to hear his voice filled with emotion. He sounds like a wreck. Before he knows it, he’s racing towards the boy. “Are you okay?”

“Of course not. You’re here.” Daegal says cheekily. He _does_ look good. He’s sitting up in his bed, covered in clean, new bandages.

Arthur lets out a shaky, but relieved laugh. His body relaxes—finally relaxes and he didn’t even know that he was holding that tension for so long, perhaps since he woke up and Daegal was gone.

“Wait, how are you here?” Daegal asks. “And why are you dressed like a frat boy.”

Arthur doesn’t know what that means, so he ignores it, choosing instead to level Daegal with a serious look and wry grin, “I told you that I would get us out of here.”

“Get us out of here?” Daegal asks, shocked. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Freya has a plan.”

“Freya is in on this now?”

“Yeah. She’s going to come and get us. I just need to get you in a ‘wheel chair’—whatever that is—and we can go.”

Arthur starts looking around the room for anything that looks like a chair with wheels on it. If the terms “rubber band” and “sun glasses” have taught him anything, it’s that the name should match the description.

“Arthur,” Daegal calls. Arthur doesn’t find anything on this side of the room, so he goes to the other side—past the curtain—to look.

Daegal calls his name again.

“One second,” Arthur calls back. There, he sees it in the corner. He, at first, wonders how he’s going to drag it back across the room—it looks heavy—but the way it’s made allows him to just pull it back with him like a cart. He sets it beside Daegal’s bed. “Do you need help getting in?”

Daegal levels him with a sorrowful look. “Arthur…I’m not going with you.”

It’s like a punch to the face.

“What do you mean you’re not going?” Arthur asks slowly. He can’t believe it, after all of this time. “You said that you would go if I could prove that I had magic—"

“I never said that. You just assumed.”

“But you _did_ see, right? You saw what I did? You believe me? That I have magic?”

“Yes.”

“Then why won’t you come with me?” Arthur says, sounding desperate to his own ears. “You don’t trust me?”

“No, Arthur, that’s not it. I trust you; I do. It’s just—”

“What?” Now Arthur just sounds angry. And he is. He did all of this—he’s fought every day for the both of them. So why won’t Daegal fight for himself?

“You don’t _listen_ to me. You just hear what you want to hear and fill in gaps that aren’t there. I _told_ you that I’m not leaving. And it’s for a good reason.”

“What could possibly be the reason for imprisoning yourself? For giving up?” Arthur is growing more and more frustrated by the second. Freya should be here any minute and everything is falling apart.

“There’s something you don’t know—something I didn’t tell you because…I don’t know. I was scared and I didn’t want you to be crushed. You already seemed to have such little hope carrying you forward, but you _have_ to know,” Daegal say, words heavy with grief. It makes Arthur pause. What could be so bad?

“What are you talking about?” Arthur asks softly, anger draining from him all at once.

“Just…just go look out the window.”

“Why—”

“If you do it—if you see what I mean, see that there’s no point in leaving…and you still want me to go with you, I’ll do it,” Daegal says, tears beginning to form in his eyes. “But I don’t think that you will.”

Arthur wants to ask if Daegal means it—if he’ll go with him—but Arthur knows that he does, so he walks over to the other side of the room.

He approaches the window, seeing the same stars as earlier. He pulls back the curtain and sees a city on fire.

At first, he feels like he’s on another world, and perhaps he is. Metal beasts fly at lightning speed down below and buildings made of glass reach higher than any he’s ever seen. There’s light and life in the darkness, but not like he knows.

And it all makes sense now—the strange words, clothes, devices, everything. It can’t _all_ be magic, can it? And he can’t just be in another kingdom.

He’s _not_ in another kingdom, is he?

“What does it mean?” he asks, even though he already knows.

“Camelot doesn’t exist anymore, Arthur. Your world doesn’t exist anymore.  And you aren’t supposed to, either.”

He clutches his chest with one arm and faintly uses the other as leverage to hold him up. But then he’s falling, falling, falling onto his knees on the ground.

A deep and ugly grief settles itself inside of him, heavy and persistent. He feels like his chest is being crushed by the weight of it. His face screws up in agony and tear run hot from his eyes down to his chin.

They were right. They were always right.

They thought he was crazy because King Arthur is dead. And they were right.

He really did die and so did everyone else.

And he’s alone.

\---

Freya finds him like that, waiting for the pain to wade, to pulse away like all pain is supposed to. Only, it doesn’t and Arthur doesn’t know if it ever will.

“Arthur…” Freya says in confusion, kneeling down to meet him on the floor, “what’s wrong?”

Arthur stares forward, unmoving.

“What happened?” she asks, softer this time. She wraps her arms around him, rubbing circles into his back. “What happened,” she asks again, voice soothing. And for the umpteenth time since he’s been here, he feels like a child again. He doesn’t care, though—he just lets himself bask in the comfort she’s providing.

“They’re all gone, Freya,” Arthur says, voice coming out broken and hoarse. “Gone and dead for over a _thousand_ _years_.”

Doctor Williams’ words echo in his ears. A thousand years—Arthur can barely comprehend it, much less be able to perceive it as his reality.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur,” Freya says, sounding almost as sad as he does. “Words cannot express how sorry I am, but we need to get out of here before it’s too late.”

“What’s the point? Where would we even go? I have nothing here, absolutely nothing.”

“That is not true,” Freya says, releasing him from her arms a little. She holds his face in her hands, leveling his gaze to hers. “You have me and you have Daegal. And it didn’t even take long for you to get us. So, don’t, for even a second, think otherwise. Okay?”

He nods. He believes her, but it doesn’t take away his pain. It doesn’t save the people he’s lost.

“We need to get out of here,” she continues, not letting go of his face. “We need to be strong. I need you to be strong, because giving up won’t get you anywhere. For some reason, you survived. For some reason, you brought magic with you. And for some reason, you ended up here. It has to mean something—it _has_ to.”

“What? What does it mean?” he asks, desperately.

“I don’t know, but we can’t find out unless we leave. Now.”

It’s something—a spark of hope, a fire to ignite something in him.

Really, he’ll settle for anything to make him feel like there’s no point to anything. He thought that he was going in the right direction—that he was avoiding the road to despair. Maybe all roads just lead to hopelessness and it doesn’t matter how you get there—you just get there.

But, if he can take a detour, maybe he can prolong the inevitable.

He gathers his strength and stands up, wiping his eyes. He spares a glance at the window—the source of his newfound anguish—and turns away from it, ignoring his new reality for now. He breaches the other side of the room, pulling back the curtain and looking at Daegal.

“You said that you would come with me if I wanted you to,” Arthur says steadily. “Well, I want you to. We’re leaving.”

Daegal nods, looking equal parts shocked and afraid and regretful. They’ll handle it later.

And that’s when an alarm goes off.

Freya looks to Arthur, eyes wide. “The PCA. They must have arrived early.”

Arthur is reminded of the woman in the hallway. Could that have been her? She saw him, then. She knows that he was looking for a room on this _side_ of the unit.

They should be here soon, then. It won’t be difficult for them to figure out that Arthur would go and try to save his old roommate.

A feeling of calm washes over Arthur.

This, he knows. This is a battlefield. Everything is out in the open now and all he has to do is fight.

All of his grief and shame suddenly turn into anger, burning bright red and hot. And that, in turn, becomes fuel. It channels through him as pure energy and Arthur can suddenly feel that force back on his hand, only this time, it rolls up the length of his arm, across his shoulders and pools in his chest.

Freya gasps. “Arthur, your eyes—”

“Get Daegal in the chair and get ready,” Arthur commands, a strength in his voice that shouldn’t have now.

It sounds doubled, like something or someone else is carrying it.

Like someone is carrying him.

Freya immediately obeys, helping Daegal get into the wheelchair and disconnecting his IV. She places her bag on his lap, which looks heavier than an empty bag should be. Arthur briefly wonders what she could have stashed in there in the time it took him to get here.

“Ready,” Freya confirms.

“We’re going to walk out of here. If anyone gets in the way of that, just…stand behind me. I’ll take care of it.” Arthur says.

He doesn’t wait for Freya to answer, just starts walking. The ground begins to rumble violently as he does, and he can hear crashing just outside the door.  

He approaches the door, but before he even thinks about opening it, it flies open for him. Freya and Daegal follow behind as he walks out of the room into the open area, aiming for the exit straight ahead on the other side of the unit.

The common area and the hallways surrounding it are almost upended. There’s debris and broken glass on the floor. Carpet is torn up, walls are lightly cracked, and lights are either broken, flickering, or dim in their places in the ceiling. Nurses are crouched down at their station. Voices that were recently howling with laughter are now whimpering as they ride out another tremor.

Despite this, the ground that Arthur walks on feels steady and he, as well as Freya and Daegal seem unaffected by the unit’s turbulence.

Someone immediately spots him—a guard. He picks something up by his hip—a weapon unlike any Arthur has ever seen, but a weapon, nonetheless. He points it at Arthur. “Freeze.”

Arthur stops in his tracks, as do Freya and Daegal.  

The guard then whispers into a device by his shoulder, holding it to his mouth with his free hand, “Yeah, I’ve got them. And I’m gonna need backup here.”

The ground begins to rumble even more, which serves as a quick distraction for the guard. Arthur then sticks his already raised hands out and thinks _push._

The weapon flies out of the guard’s grip, smashing on a nearby wall behind him.

Arthur turns to keep walking, heading for the door. He’s not very worried about a man without a weapon.

He crosses the common area. Items brush away and chairs tear themselves apart to give him a clear path. Once he reaches the door, he expects it to open for him, but it doesn’t. It must be heavier than the door to Daegal’s room.

The paper.

Arthur turns to Freya. “Do you have the paper that makes the door open?”

“The key card?” Freya asks. Arthur nods.

Another rumble, then a crash. Their heads all swivel to see the hallway behind them. By Arthur’s room the crack in the wall has gotten bigger, spreading itself to the floor. The nurses whimper with the sound.

Freya recovers first, calling Arthur’s name and passing the ‘key card’ to him. He catches it and slams it across the place on the wall he saw earlier.

The door opens.

And there are two guards on the other side.

Arthur tosses the key card back to Freya. “Get back.”

The weaponless guard is back, emboldened by their newfound company.

All three circle Arthur—two in the back and one in front—ready to fight.

Well, Arthur is ready, too.  

The weaponless guard attacks Arthur first, attempting to grab him by the shoulder. Arthur quickly evades this, ducking down and turning around. He places a hand on the guard’s chest and pushes him, just like he did with his weapon. Just like he did with the guard during his last incident.

The guard goes flying, hitting his head on the wall across the room. He doesn’t get up, but Arthur checks—he’s still breathing.

The other two guards stare at Arthur, shocked.

“Arthur!” Freya calls. She’s now situated by the exit with Daegal. She holds the key card up by the wall, holding the door open. “We have to go.” She’s trying to keep him from doing too much damage, but all she does is draw attention to herself.

One of the remaining guards runs towards her.

Arthur tries to push him out of the way, but a sharp and intense pain goes through him, racing through his body like a bolt of lightning. He falls to the ground and looks up, only to see the other guard with a device—the same weapon the first guard was pointing at Arthur. Only it’s active—long, thin ropes coming out of it and connecting to Arthur’s back. “Stay down,” he says. “I don’t know what you are, but I’m not afraid to use this again.”

And Arthur is feeling…drained, energy beginning to leave him. He quickly remembers that these events usually take a lot from him—he often needs to sleep afterwards—and he’s already tired from the all of the walking and running and standing he’s done so far, today. He almost wants to fall asleep.

Arthur shakes his head. No, he can’t do that right now.

Arthur looks to Daegal and Freya. They’re in the custody of the other guard, who is also raising the same type of weapon at them in warning. They have their hands raised in surrender. And they look...scared. Freya looks like she’s trying to keep her cool, but there’s a real fear in her eyes. Daegal, on the other hand, looks straight up terrified.

They need him.

Maybe Freya was right about them being there for him. Now he has to be there for them.

Arthur raises one arm in surrender. “Okay, okay. You got me.”

“I want to see the other arm, too.”

“I think it’s hurt,” Arthur says. “I must have landed on it wrong when you used that thing on me.” He shoots a pointed look towards the weapon, accusingly.

“I don’t care, I want to see it,” the guard commands.

Arthur raises it a little, then winces. He continues to raise it higher, but it hangs limp from the elbow down. “See?”

The guard looks like he doesn’t know what to do. In fact, he kind of looks like he doesn’t want to be in this situation at all. “Fine, just…get up,” he relents, “slowly. And I want to see that other hand down by your side.”

Arthur obeys and begins to stand up, slowly.

He then uses whatever is left of the magic he has, sticks out his arm, and pushes the guard near Freya and Daegal down the hall. As he goes, the weapon fires, but misses the two. Long, thin ropes shoot out, electricity coating them, and then kick back towards the guard once he lands, stunning him briefly.

He’s down by the hall, past the crack in the floor by Arthur’s room. At this point, it’s formed into a chasm, unsteady ground open and uncrossable. If the guard gets back up before they’re gone, he’ll have to go around the unit the other way.

Arthur uses the distraction to his benefit and pulls the rubber band out of his pocket with the hand that is still hanging low. He wraps it around the outstretched arm of the guard in front of him. It’s so tight on the man’s wrist that the weapon falls out of his hand before he can fire it.

Arthur kicks it away and the ropes detach from his back. He circles around the guard, placing a hand and a knee on the man’s back, pushing his weight forward and tackling him to the ground.

With the rubber band still on the guard’s wrist, Arthur uses it to tie both of his hands behind his back.

Well, there goes bringing it back to Evan.

Arthur wastes no time, racing towards Daegal and Freya. “Let’s get out of here.”

Freya slams the key card against the wall again and they’re out of there.

“What now?” Arthur asks. They’re running, even without a clear destination in mind. They just have to get away from the unit.

“We’re on the third floor. We have to get to the garage, to my car,” Freya says frantically.

“How do we do that?”

“We can’t take the elevator,” she says, “They can just turn it off and trap us.”

“We have to take the stairs,” Daegal says solemnly. He turns to Arthur. “Arthur I can’t walk, and this chair won’t go down the stairs.”

“We’ll carry you,” Arthur says, knowing what Daegal is getting at.

“Not if you want to get out of here,” Daegal says, “You have to leave me behind.”

“No,” Arthur yells. “We are _not_ leaving you behind.”

The room shakes slightly with his anger and Daegal cowers, left over magic pouring out of him. Arthur decides to change his approach.

“You said that you trust me, right? So, trust me. Please. I can’t let anyone else down. Not again,” Arthur says this hurriedly, but it just sounds like desperation. Maybe it is.

He’s lost everyone. He’s lost _Merlin_. He won’t do it again.

“Okay,” Daegal says quietly.

“Where are the nearest set of stairs?” Arthur asks Freya.

She looks around, then points. “Down the hall.” They make a beeline for the exit.

A monotone voice Arthur doesn’t know rings in from the walls. “Code Triage. I repeat, Code Triage.”

“Internal or external disaster,” Freya clarifies. “They think it’s another earthquake. They’ll take cover and we can get out. We just have to be quick.”

“Will they be okay, though?” Arthur asks.

“As long as you don’t start anymore earthquakes, yes. This place is built like a fortress. They’ll be fine.”

They lift Daegal up from the chair, wrapping an arm around each of Arthur and Freya’s shoulders and slowly make their way down the stairs. It’s long and tedious—Arthur is tired and as all magical energy drains from him, so does the ability to ignore the strain he’s already put on his body.

He pushes through, anyway.

He pushes through all the way to the ground floor, through the dark hallways with crumbling walls, and through to the garage.

“Wait here. I’ll go get my car,” Freya says and then takes off. Arthur sets Daegal to the ground, gently, then falls down, himself, exhausted.

“Arthur, are you okay?” Daegal asks softly.

“No. I’m not,” Arthur answers simply. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be okay again.

Daegal lets out a heavy sigh. He’s probably exhausted, too. It wouldn’t have been easy for him to do all of that moving, even with Arthur and Freya’s support.

The ground shakes slightly around them and Arthur braces for another tremor, but it doesn’t come. What does come is a monster. It’s large and bulky with fire coming out of it’s eyes. It lets out a continuous growl, getting louder and louder the closer it gets to them.

Arthur gears up for another fight, not sure if he would be able to do it. His magic is entirely drained from him and he’ dangerously tired, on the verge of passing out.

Daegal shakes Arthur’s shoulder. “Arthur. Freya’s here, we have to go.”

Arthur is having trouble keeping his eyes open, yet alone lifting his head to spot Freya, but he somehow finds the strength to do both.

Through blurry eyes, he sees Freya exit the beast and then help Daegal into it. With the side compartment open, Arthur can see that it isn’t a beast, but another device. A large, metal device that looks kind of like a carriage on the inside. Is this the ‘car’ Freya was talking about?

Freya comes back for Arthur, puts a firm grip on his arm, but struggles to lift him up. “I can’t do this by myself. You have to help me,” she says to him.

He puts himself up on weak arms and then on weak knees. She takes it from there, mostly, hauling him up to his feet. She puts one of his arms around her shoulders—like they did with Daegal—and guides his hand to the side of the car. Arthur uses it for leverage and does his best to help Freya get him into the seat inside, next to Daegal.

“Daegal, there’s a blanket on the floor,” Freya says. “Cover yourself with it and pretend to be asleep.”

Once he’s all the way in, Freya closes the door and Arthur closes his eyes.

He doesn’t fall asleep yet, not even when the car begins moving—so, it _is_ like a carriage. It stops and start a few times, but eventually, they’re clear of the building. Of the place that he’s been prisoner of for the past few weeks. Little did he know that he’s probably less free out here—in a land he knows nothing of.

Arthur lays his head across the back of his seat and opens his eyes.

Through the back window, he can still see Mountainside General.

From the outside, one might not be able to tell all that just happened. Aside from the obvious loss of light in certain sections, the building seems to be pretty intact—a perfect place to hold some of his worst memories.

Arthur shifts his gaze up to the night sky above the city on fire.

It reminds him of home.

He closes his eyes again.

Arthur doesn’t have a home anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading, as well as for the comments and kudos! You can find me @arthurandhisswordbros on tumblr.


	6. Options

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh sorry this one was late. I had my wisdom teeth removed and couldn't finish the chapter before the procedure. All is well now, though! 
> 
> Also! Congrats to AO3 on the Hugo Award! That's so unbelievably awesome and well deserved!
> 
> Finally, this chapter, as well as almost all the other ones, was beta'd by the amazing simthemuse (@ninjahijabimuse on tumblr)!

 

In the day and a half following their escape, they seldom leave the car.

Freya says that once the people who will come after them notice that both Arthur and Daegal are missing, they’ll look for clues to find them. She says that they’ll check the “security footage” and look for her car; they need to get as far away as possible before then.

Arthur doesn’t mind. He spends most of the time sleeping, anyway. And when he’s not, he’s pretending to sleep, closing his eyes to avoid…well, everything. Being awake means being present and being present means admitting that he lives here now.

And it also means admitting that everyone else he loves  _ isn’t. _

“Do you  _ really _ think that they’ll see what he did on the security footage? Or that they’ll even be able to make sense of it?” Daegal asks Freya in the quiet of the car. It’s daytime—Arthur can tell by the light slightly filtering through his eyelids, magnified by the glass of the window he’s resting by.

“I don’t know. I mean, even if they do, they’ll most likely just say it’s because of the earthquake. Magic is—or, rather can be…a hard pill to swallow,” Freya responds.

“I guess. Even  _ I _ didn’t believe him until I saw his eyes glow,” Daegal says, then lets out a dry chuckle. “I told him to look away. I didn’t want Jack to see him. I thought that he would get in more trouble.”

“Jack probably would have said it was a trick of the light or something,” Freya says, and Arthur can hear the smile on her face. “You didn’t have to worry.”

“Yeah, but I did. I still do,” Daegal says. He pauses. “I’m just…worried about how he’s going to handle…all of this.”

“He’s supposed to be King Arthur. He can handle anything, right?” Freya says lightly.

Daegal pauses. “Do you really believe that he’s  _ the _ King Arthur?”

“I think…that I might,” Freya answers. “I kind of have to.”

She mumbles the last part so quietly that Arthur thinks he may have misheard her. He thinks that Daegal may be thinking the same, because the conversation ends there.

\---

When Arthur dreams again, he isn’t by the lake, nor is he on the outside watching. He isn’t anywhere, really—just surrounded by darkness.

Suddenly, something pops up in front of him.

It’s just an image, one that seems to be having trouble finding its clarity. It hazes in and out of his vision, so he can’t focus on it at first. Once it’s finally clear, the image goes dark, but not before he can register it.

It’s the image from the hat before.

But why?

\---

Arthur wakes to someone softly shaking his shoulder.

“Arthur,” Freya singsongs sweetly. “It’s time to wake up.”

Arthur’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. He opens his eyes slowly and Freya delicately brushes hair away from his face.

“We’ve stopped and I need you to help me with something,” Freya continues. She gives him a light tap to his cheek and chuckles when his face scrunches up in annoyance.  “C’mon. I need your help getting Daegal in the room.” She walks away and he sits up, stretching his sore arms and legs, as well as taking in his surroundings.

It’s night out and there’s a cool chill coming in from the open car door. He’s still in the back seat next to a sleeping Daegal, who startles awake as soon as Arthur shakes his arm.

Arthur gives him a few moments to properly wake up before stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind him.

Freya is pulling something out of a compartment by the back of the car—the bag from earlier. Arthur doesn’t ask what she’s stashed in there; he’ll find out sooner or later. Plus, he just really doesn’t feel like talking right now. Call it lethargy or a defiant will to not participate in this world, but either way, Arthur isn’t going to analyze it.

Freya closes the compartment, slamming it’s cover with a sharp thud. "We’re in room 25 for the night. It’s on the ground floor, straight ahead.” She points towards the room. It’s one of many lining the walls of the building on each floor. “Right there. I’m going to need you to get Daegal in there after I unlock the door.”

Arthur nods and travels around to the other side to get Daegal ready. He pulls the boy out of the car gently and Daegal wraps an arm around Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur almost topples over at first, the sudden weight a bit too much for his still sore muscles. He quickly recovers, though, and bears it until Freya joins them, several large bags hanging off of her shoulders. She helps relieve some of the weight, but not enough to make getting to the room an easy task. 

They make it to the door and Arthur has to support Daegal’s full weight, by himself, while Freya unlocks the door and then they’re in.

“You got us a room?” Daegal almost slurs, still fighting off the grogginess of sleep.

“Yeah, it’s a cheap motel, but they let me pay cash,” Freya says.

“Good,” Daegal says. “Can’t have them tracking us.”

Freya turns on the lights, drops her bags and helps Arthur get Daegal to the bed. The boy lets out a grunt as he sinks into the mattress. With the lights on, the room is bright—no brighter than the hospital, but it’s still a shock to Arthur’s eyes, which haven’t completely adjusted to being in the waking world just yet.

Freya must catch this, because she offers him an apologetic look. She places her bags down on the unoccupied bed. “I’ll be in the bathroom,” she says, escaping to a room in the far back.

Arthur is quite familiar with the “bath room”; he first discovered it as he was exploring their room at the hospital, looking for a way out. Once he got permission to walk around unsupervised, the people at Mountainside General decided that he should become acquainted with it, rather than continue to use the bedside chamber pot.

Another moment and Arthur can hear the telltale sound of water falling, pitter pattering away at the floor. Really, if anything should have clued him in to the fact that he was in another era, the “shower” device would be it. It is truly a magnificent creation.

Arthur lays down on the bed beside Daegal and lets out a long sigh.  

“Wait. There are only two beds, so who’s going to sleep where?” Daegal asks.

Arthur rolls his eyes and sits up. He picks up one of the spare pillows off of the bed, drops it on the patch of floor in between the two beds and lays down on it. He’s slept in worse places.

Arthur tries to stubbornly will himself to sleep, but after a few moments of closing his eyes, he knows that it won’t happen, at least not any time soon. All of that time sleeping in the car has rendered him nothing short of wide awake.

He stares at the ceiling. Fine, he’ll just lay here until he  _ does _ fall asleep, then. Even if it takes hours.

Suddenly, something eclipses his vision. Arthur open his eyes.

“Hey, Arthur. I want to show you something. Sit up.” Daegal’s tone is uncharacteristically bright—for the situation they’re in, as well as in general.

Maybe that’s why Arthur obeys, albeit reluctantly. He shoots Daegal a questioning look.  

“Look,” Daegal points forward towards a large, rectangular black box straight across the room. It looks like the one they had in the hospital room. Arthur never knew what it was, and he never asked; no one seemed to interact with it, anyway, so there was never a point.

Daegal then pulls some device from the table beside him and fiddles with it for a second.

All of the sudden, the box bursts with color.

And Arthur can see people, can hear their voices. At first he startles, but then he’s almost immediately more intrigued than scared. He sits up further, leaning forward.

Although, he is unable to keep the shock from his face before Daegal notices, a shit eating grin forming on the boy’s face.

Arthur almost rolls his eyes. Why does he have to be so  _ smug _ about this?

“That’s more like the Arthur I know,” the Daegal says. Before Arthur can find a way to get revenge, Daegal redirects their attention back to the box. “You see, it’s like the radio, except instead of just voices and singing, you actually get to see the people.”

Arthur approaches the black box calmly, not wanting to startle the people in it. Can they even see him? He turns to Daegal, reluctantly sparing a word. “How?”

Daegal somehow looks even  _ more _ smug, satisfaction coloring his face. Well, there goes his “no speaking” rule, just like most of the petty things Arthur attempts to subscribe to.

“Well, people go in rooms and put on, like, plays,” Daegal rushes out, as though Arthur will lose attention if he doesn’t, “Then other people use devices to capture what they do. Then they put it on here—on TV. That stands for ‘television,’ by the way.”

So, the people aren’t  _ actually _ in the box. Strange.

The image fizzles out quickly and a new one appears. Arthur turns back towards Daegal, questioning. “Don’t worry, just changing the channel. I’m gonna find us something good to watch.”

Arthur doesn’t know what that means, but he settles back into his spot on the floor. He props the pillow up against the table in between the two beds to get a better look at the “TV,” and waits for Daegal to “find something good.”

The image flickers a few times until it settles on what seems to be a depiction of a duel. Two men fight with vigor, thin swords clashing and clanging back and forth. Despite this, it all seems to be in good fun—the men trade quips and it seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a casual conversation.

It almost reminds Arthur of Gwaine, who always has a joke, or some witticism to make during practice. It sends another pang—one of countless that Arthur has been feeling since they left the hospital—through his chest. He tries to do his best to let it pass without doing too much damage.

“Oh, this is a good one!” Daegal says, setting his little device down on the bed.

Freya comes out toweling her hair. Her clothes are more lax and comfortable-looking than what she was wearing before—clothes which looked more like the ones Arthur was wearing. She said that she didn’t want to be caught looking like a nurse for the rest of the drive, so she left her uniform at one of the places they stopped for food.

“The Princess Bride. I used to love this movie,” she says excitedly.

“Used to?” Daegal asks, sounding slightly offended.

“Yeah, as a kid. I haven’t seen it in years,” she says, pacifying Daegal. She plops onto the empty bed, settling in.

For the remainder of the “movie,” Arthur sits stock still, enraptured by the tale of adventure, evil kings, brave bandits, and…love. It makes his chest ache, seeing Westley and Buttercup fight for each other to the point of dying, should it be necessary. It reminds him of Gwen and maybe even Merlin a little bit. The big idiot has sacrificed himself plenty for Arthur and Arthur has in return.

Another pang hits him, this one harder to ignore.

Arthur guesses that Merlin’s sacrifices will just go on as debts forever unpaid. Arthur can’t even tell him how thankful he is, either. Thankful for all of the things he didn’t know and thankful for all of the things he’s learning about Merlin—about what he did for him—in the time that has passed since Arthur last saw him.  

Long after the movie is over, as nonsense plays on TV in the background, Freya and Daegal are both fast asleep. Arthur maintains his spot on the floor, despite the fact that he knows that neither of the others would mind if he slept next to them.

He just wants to be alone right now, doesn’t want to share his space. A warm body next to him will only serve to remind him of the people he’s lost—of nights sleeping beside Gwen, of sharing warmth on cold nights in the forest with Merlin and his knights. It’s a powerful thing, sleeping next to a person, to let them see you, unguarded and vulnerable.

Hours later, sleep still evades Arthur, his thoughts too potent to allow him to drift off into nothingness. So, he decides to get a shower, instead.

He pads his way into the bathroom, carefully removes the clothes that Freya gave him, and steps in. It only takes a few minutes to figure out how to get the right temperature, but soon enough he’s basking under the heavy, warm spray of water.

And he scrubs himself clean—clean of the sticky substance that the tape from his IV left behind, clean of the smell of the hospital that somehow has never left his nostrils, the sweat from his escape, and everything that could stand to remind him of the time he spent there. He wants to forget it all, wants to peel it from his skin until it washes down the drain, forgotten.

At least for a moment.

\---

He steps out of the shower and Freya is awake. Or, she seems to be awake. Her eyes are closed and she’s still lying down, but her breathing is too fast, too shallow for sleep.

Did something happen?

He passes her, making his way back to his pillow on the floor. If she wanted him to interact with her, she would approach him first. He learned a long time ago that Freya doesn’t like her business to be picked at. When she’s ready, she’ll come to you.

That doesn’t stop Arthur, though, from watching over her. He waits for her breathing to calm and once it does, he lies back down, relaxing into a sleeping position. His eyes feel heavy, so he lets himself drift off.

Before he’s out, though, he feels the weight of a blanket being placed on him.

He falls asleep with a ghost of a smile on his face, one that never fully forms.

\---

Arthur drifts in.

“…you have to tell him.”

“Not until we get somewhere safe.”

“Freya—”

“I have it under control.”

And then he drifts out. He doesn’t even have the mental faculties to call it a dream, nor something that’s really happening. It just floats by, barely catching on his subconscious, and fluttering away.  

\---

The next day, they see themselves on TV.

It happens as soon as Freya returns from the “vending machine,” carrying small, light bags which hold cheap but delicious food. She drops it on Daegal’s bed, telling them to pick what they want when Daegal notices her picture in the box. “Freya, isn’t that you?”

She whips around in time to see the image change to a set of three pictures—two which capture Freya and Daegal as if they were really there, and one which seems to be a well-rendered drawing of Arthur.

Daegal turns the volume up.

“…last spotted leaving the parking garage at Mountainside General Hospital, Freya Johansson, a nurse at the facility, disappeared along with two patients, 17-year old Daegal Vaughn and a John Doe. The nature of this disappearance is unknown, but the police are not ruling out kidnapping—”

Freya runs her hands through her hair. “Kidnapping? Jesus.” She says it incredulously, as though the severity of what she has done has just hit her.

The woman on TV continues, “The John Doe, who apparently prefers to be called ‘Arthur Pendragon’ after the famous king, is said to be mentally unstable as well as physically violent. Due to damage from the earthquake that hit the Mountainside area at the time, there is no in-hospital security footage of the conflict, but sources say that Mr. Pendragon assaulted approximately three security guards as well as critically injuring a staff member as he made his escape.”

“Well at least we don’t have to worry about the security footage,” Daegal says plainly.

Freya shuts off the television angrily. “We have to leave. Soon.” She digs through one of her large bags and pulls out a bundle of clothes. “Here,” she says throwing them on Daegal’s bed. “The both of you, get changed and start packing.” She grabs her own bundle and heads for the bathroom.

Arthur turns to Daegal. “Do you need help?”

“No, I think I got it,” Daegal says. He pulls out the clothes which would seem to fit his thin frame the best. Arthur takes the rest and quickly changes in the corner. He then throws his old clothes into one of the bags and waits for Daegal and Freya to get ready.  

Something suddenly catches his eye—the bag that Freya brought from the hospital. He can hear the rustling of Daegal still getting changed behind him, as well as running water from the bathroom.

So, Arthur decides to open it, mostly out of curiosity. What he sees are an assortment of bandages, tape—items Freya must have taken from the hospital to take care of Daegal. Digging deeper, Arthur finds a number of orange bottles with white caps. He picks one up and its contents rattle, tiny objects moving about within the container.

The word “Diazepam” is written in big letters on the outside. The word sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it. Despite this, it’s clear that these are meant for medicinal purposes, if the instructions of when to take are anything to go by. These must be the “pills” Freya was talking about before—a way to receive medicine without an IV.

But, who are they meant for? Arthur? Daegal? Both?

A tiny voice in his head wonders if Freya is going to drug them.  

“I’m finished,” Daegal says, calling from the bed and startling Arthur.  

Arthur shakes the traitorous voice from his head. No, Freya wouldn’t do that. They’ve been through too much together and she’s sacrificed so much to save him. Why would she want to hurt him?

He really needs to stop being so suspicious of her intentions. She doesn’t deserve it.

Arthur gently places the bottle back in the bag, then collects and deposits Daegal’s old clothing with his own.

Freya comes rushing out of the bathroom, hair pulled up in a hat like the one she gave Arthur. Her eyes look a little red and puffy, like she’s been crying. Despite this, her expression is nothing but serious—in a way that tells him not to comment on it.

She takes a deep breath. “Arthur take the bags—”

And then someone knocks, startling everyone in the room.

Freya holds up a placating hand towards Arthur, probably afraid that he’ll react quickly. She then approaches the door cautiously, as if someone is going to burst in any moment. Perhaps they will.

Arthur quietly falls behind her. Just in case.

She props herself up on her toes and puts an eye to the hole in the door, then quickly turns to Arthur. “It’s the man from the front desk,” she whispers, eyes wide.

So, this man is a potential threat.

“I can hear you, you know. Open the damn door,” the front desk man shouts.

“What do you want?” Freya calls back. Arthur looks at her wide eyed. What does she think she’s doing?

She gives him a look that says, “Well, what do  _ you _ want to do about it?” It’s accompanied by a large, frantic sweeping gesture.

“I want you out of this room. Check out was over an hour ago,” the man says, leaning his weight on the door to seem intimidating.

Freya deflates, looking relieved. “We were just leaving. We’ll be out in five minutes.”

“Good, then I’ll wait for you out here,” the man says stubbornly.

Freya and Arthur share another look. “Okay,” she replies awkwardly, then she’s moving, packing up the remains of what they have left and directing Arthur to do the same. “Get the bags,” she tells Arthur, then settles down by Daegal, helping him get to the edge of his bed.

“What if he recognizes us?” Daegal asks worriedly.

“The car isn’t very far away. We’ll just make a run for it if we have to. Until then, heads down.” She directs that last part to Arthur. “We don’t need to make another scene.”

Arthur rolls his eyes.

“Just,” Freya continues, “I’ll handle the bags and the man outside. Arthur, just focus on getting Daegal into the car. Daegal, is there any way you can make it look like you need less help walking? Looking like you do will definitely tip him off.”

“I guess,” Daegal says annoyedly. At Freya’s slightly stressed look, his calms down a bit. “I’ll try my best.”

She gives him a small smile and stands up to gather the bags. Arthur takes her spot, helping Daegal stand up.

In the same manner that they entered this room, they head towards the door. Freya opens it, letting Arthur and Daegal walk through, while doing her best to hide them from the man’s sight as they make their way to the car.

Arthur has the urge to size up the man in case there is a fight, but he keeps his head down like Freya told him to. Plus, Daegal is working hard to look like he doesn’t need Arthur to walk that much, so it’s probably not best to linger and make him suffer.

Arthur gets Daegal in the car easily and Freya handles what Arthur presumes is payment, handing the man a thick stack of paper.

“It’s 250 for being late,” the man says.

Freya looks like she wants to fight him on it, but it’ll only take up more time, so she hands him another paper and Arthur steps up to take the bags from her.

“Woah, you’re a big guy. Do you work out?” the man asks, appraising Arthur.  

“Oh, him? Yes, he does…competitive fencing,” Freya lies. Arthur takes the bags and heads towards the back of the car, but still watches them in case anything happens.

“Oh. So, is that why the other one had trouble getting in the car?” the man sounds a touch suspicious. “An injury or something?”

Freya laughs. “Yeah, he’s new to the sport. He pulled something while…lunging. I have no idea what we’ll do with him.”

The man laughs along with her, seemingly convinced. Arthur rejoins Freya, hovering behind her and growing increasingly anxious. “We should go,” he says.

Freya gives him a wide, fake smile. “You know what, you’re right. We  _ should _ get going.” She turns hallway to the car, body language signaling that the conversation should be wrapping up soon. “We have a tournament to get to.”

“Oh really, where at?” the man asks, ignoring her cues.

Freya flounders for a second. “Up north.” The man takes a step closer, as does Arthur.  

“Hey, you know…you guys look kind of familiar. Do I know you?” The atmosphere begins to change from bordering on the line of dangerous to actually dangerous.  

“No, I don’t think so—”

“Yeah, I just saw you guys on TV.”

Freya puts a hand on Arthur’s arm behind her back, trying to settle him. It’s not working. “You must be mistaken,” she says.

“No, I just saw the three of your faces,” he sticks three fingers out, gesturing to each of them, “on the news this morning. Something about a kidnapping…I’m not sure.” He scratches his head. “Or, you know, I could be mistaken….” He looks down pointedly at the stack of paper he’s still holding, his remaining words are unspoken, yet heard loud and clear by all parties.

_ For a price. _

Arthur doesn’t hesitate, pushing past Freya and kicking the man in the chest. It’s colored with anger and therefore, colored with a little bit of magic, so the man goes flying, little bits of paper fluttering about in the air as he does. He crashed to the ground about five doors down.

“Let’s go. Now,” Arthur commands.

He and Freya make a beeline for the car. Arthur finds his place in the front this time, next to Freya, who swiftly starts the car and they race out of there. “That was so stupid, Arthur. I had it completely under control!” she yells. “Now he’s going to tell the police that we were there. All we had to do was give him the money and it would have been fine.”

“He was going to take your ‘money’ and tell them anyway, Freya! I had no choice!” Arthur yells back.

“You  _ had _ a choice. You could have  _ trusted _ me—”

“He would have taken everything if we let him.”

“Or maybe he wouldn’t have. You don’t know, Arthur. You don’t  _ know _ anything!”

That elicits a pause. Arthur takes a deep breath.

“I know that that man was under the impression that we were kidnapping Daegal and instead of doing what he would perceive to be the right thing, he tried to extort us. A man like that can’t be trusted,” Arthur says this slowly, not because he thinks that Freya won’t get it, but because if he follows this train of screaming any longer, he’s going to say something he regrets.

“Maybe you’re right, but there was  _ still _ a chance that he wouldn’t have told. Doing what you did completely took it off the table,” Freya says slowly, as well. She huffs out a breath. “Arthur, the world is different now, more complex. You have to weight your options more. Not everything can be solved through violence or magic. All that does is draw attention to you—unwanted attention.”

“So, I have to hide?” Arthur asks.

“We  _ are _ hiding. And yes, from certain people, we do need to hide, so they don’t hurt us.”

This conversation is starting to remind Arthur of his time in the hospital, lying about what he really knows and how he really feels only at the whims of those who would hurt him for the truth. He thought that it would be different when he got out, but it’s not.

And he doesn’t get it. If the world is so complex now—a world with devices that perform magic every day—then why does anyone have to hide. It’s been over a thousand years and magic users are still kept in the dark. Arthur is kept in the dark, everywhere he goes.

Arthur doesn’t answer after that. There’s not much else to say.

Really, he regrets opening his mouth in the first place.

\---

They’re in the car for another few hours before they have to begrudgingly stop again. Freya says that the car needs fuel to keep going and she needs to take a break anyway—apparently “driving” for long periods of time can take a lot out of a person. If it’s anything like riding a horse for hours on end, Arthur can commiserate with her.

After they refuel the car, they sit in a “parking lot” amongst an assortment of other cars for a while. At first, Arthur questions the safety of taking a break out in the open, but Freya says that it’s less conspicuous than pulling over to the side of the road. A car by itself will raise suspicion, but around others, no one even notices.

“Do you think that anyone will recognize the car?” Daegal asks.

“Probably not. I mean, we’re in a white Camry. That’s like one of the most common cars out there. Plus, we’re hours away from the hotel, yet alone the hospital.” She puts a hand behind her to pat Daegal on the knee. “Don’t worry. We won’t be here for long. I only need like twenty minutes and then I’ll be good to go.”

Arthur doubts that this is the case, but he doesn’t say anything about it, instead opting to ask, “Where  _ are _ we going, anyway?” He’s still a little defensive from their last conversation, so it comes out almost as a retort.  

Freya ignores his tone. “There’s this little town in the middle of nowhere. I stayed at a cabin there a few springs ago with some of my friends. The business that rents them out closes in the off season, so I figure we can hide out there for the time being.”

“What if they recognize us?” Arthur asks.

“They won’t if we hide properly,” Freya points out, growing more and more irritated.

Arthur levels her with an unimpressed look.

“Do  _ you _ have any other ideas?” She turns around to face the back seat. “What about you, Daegal? Have any other places to hide?” she snaps angrily.

“No,” Daegal says quickly, clearly unnerved by Freya’s intensity.

“So why don’t you just sit down and do nothing, like you always do?” She shouts, then pauses when the harshness of her words finally registers. She has the decency to look regretful for half a second before rubbing a hand over her face in frustration and getting out of the car.

“We’ll be back in a moment,” Arthur says to Daegal, then steps out as well.

Freya is pacing back and forth in front of the car, frantically.

“What’s your  _ problem _ , Freya?” Arthur asks. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Why am I _acting_ _like_ _this_? I just upended my entire life on a whim. And now I’m in on the run for _who_ _knows_ how long?” She stops in her tracks, sinking down to the floor. “I just didn’t think that my life would turn out like this. You know, a few weeks ago, I was okay. I wasn’t happy, but I was okay. And I certainly wasn’t like this,” she says it, gesturing to herself.

“I thought you wanted to rescue us,” Arthur says sadly. He knows that this whole thing has been difficult on her, but he can’t help but feel hurt at her words.

“I did—I do. It’s just so much in so little time. I haven’t really had the time to process it all. So, maybe this is me doing that. I just…need a  _ moment _ . Can you just give me a moment?”

Arthur says, “Okay.” Because, what else can he really do?

“I’m sorry, Arthur. I really am. And I’ll apologize to Daegal. I just…need a second, okay?”

“Okay,” Arthur says. He can do that. “Do you want me to stay or get back in the car?”

She looks up at him, face red and unshed, frustrated tears in her eyes. “Can you just sit with me?”

He nods, lowering himself to the ground.

They stay like that for a little bit until Freya gets her bearings again.

Freya gives him a look that’s somewhere between apologetic and resolute, with just a touch of worry, because Freya is always worried about someone or something. She places a hand on his arm and it’s not an apology, nor is it an acceptance of an apology when Arthur puts his hand over hers.  

It just means that the matter is settle. For now.

They get back in the car and Freya offers Daegal an apology like she said she would. He accepts it, to Arthur’s surprise.

And then he remembers how Daegal was the first day Arthur met him—volatile and angry. So, maybe he understands where Freya is coming from, why she’s geared up and ready to snap at any sign of confrontation.

Maybe Daegal’s been there, himself.

Arthur doesn’t know what happened to Daegal or how he got to Mountainside General, but if he experienced a fraction of what Arthur did waking up there, then his life was upended, too.

And maybe that’s it—all three of them are lost, ripped out of the lives they thought they would live.

Maybe that’s why they were drawn to each other and maybe that’s why they’ll stay together.

\---

It’s only another hour and someone’s following them. They’re on a long stretch of road, alone; there aren’t any other cars to blend in with. It makes Arthur uneasy.

Arthur is the first to notice the car coming up in the distance. It’s fast—in a way that tells Arthur that it knows where it’s going—a specific destination. When it approaches their car, it doesn’t pass them, even though there is ample room to do so.

“Freya,” Arthur calls nervously.

Suddenly, the car behind them lets out a loud, searing wail. Red and blue lights dazzle around it, stark against the dim light of the setting sun.

Freya checks it out in her mirrors, then lets out a string of expletives.

“It’s a cop car,” Daegal says, like it means something devastating.

“Cop car?” Arthur repeats. He’s entirely lost on the significance of this.

“I’m such an idiot. I knew I shouldn’t have taken this road.” Freya bangs her hands against the wheel in front of her, gritting her teeth. Anger pours off of her in waves and Arthur is growing more and more anxious by the moment. What’s going on?

Freya takes a deep, calming breath. It doesn’t seem to work because she doesn’t relax at all. Arthur isn’t sure she’s relaxed since the hotel this morning.

The “cop car” speeds up, almost making contact with the back of their car. Freya speeds up as well.

“Arthur,” she says uneasily.  

“Yeah?” Arthur says.

“Remember when I said that we shouldn’t draw unwanted attention and that we need to weigh our options in certain situations?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I weighed the options and I’m gonna need you to get rid of the car behind us. In the most  _ nonviolent _ way you can manage.” She adds on the last part semi-belatedly.

Arthur pauses and Freya speeds up more. “What?” Arthur asks, shocked. “I don’t understand, Freya. What’s going on? Why are they following us?”

“You know the security guards from the hospital?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “These guys are a lot more dangerous. If they catch us, they  _ will _ take us in. Or, worse.”

“Worse—”

“So, I need you to use your magic to get rid of them,” she says, voice tinted with desperation.

He pauses, frozen for a second. Just a minute ago they were fine. And now he’s apparently their only hope of getting out of this situation.

“Please, Arthur,” Freya almost pleads. “Just do something—anything.”

That calm feeling settles over him again. The one that comes right before a battle.

“Are you sure?” Arthur asks, energy already building up.

“Yes!” Freya all but cries. Something in her voice—the fear she’s experiencing—unlocks something in him. He gets up on his knees in his chair, turning around to face the back window. He puts out a hand…

And the road rips behind them straight down the middle, creating a shallow chasm.

The cop car swerves behind them dramatically, running into a metal railing on the side of the road. The momentum carries them along with it and the screech of metal on metal sends small sparks into the air until the car comes to a stop.

Freya lets out a wet sob and Daegal tips over onto the seat. He lies there, breathing heavy.

Arthur continues to look back at the wreckage, his firm grip on the headrest turns his knuckles white and he breathes out the remaining energy coursing through him.

\---

They rip through the open road, trying to get away from the scene. Ten minutes later, the red and blue lights are barely visible behind them, even in the dark—which tells Arthur that they aren’t being immediately followed.

It only takes ten minutes for someone to say something. “So, what now?” Daegal asks.

“Well, they know where we are, now. And they have my license plate number down—really, any cop car that gets a read on it will track us. So, we’ll drive as far as we can and then ditch the car,” Freya says.

“Ditch the car?” Daegal asks, baffled. “But, I can’t walk.”

“We’ll get as close as we can, then carry you the rest of the way.”

“That’ll take forever.”

“We’ll have to stop for the night, too. No use travelling in the dark—it’s too dangerous,” Arthur says.

Freya shoots him a look, “Do you think you can help us make camp?”

“In the  _ woods _ ?” Daegal says.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Arthur says. And it’s the truth. While Merlin was usually the one who lit the fires and made meals whenever they were on a hunt or travelling, Arthur  _ does _ , in fact, know how to do it himself. It came in handy, just in case they were ever separated for some reason—even though that was an extremely rare occurrence.

“Okay, good,” Freya says nervously.

“I don’t think you guys are hearing me. _I_ _can’t walk._ ” Daegal says.

Freya turns to look him in the eye. “We know that Daegal, we do. It’s just…we’re so close. We’re _almost_ _there_. And we have no other choice. Okay?” Freya says sincerely, desperately.

And Arthur gets it. This trip has really done a number on her. She’s gone from one breakdown to the next but for some reason, she still has  _ hope _ . This cabin is her only hope, just like getting out was Arthur’s in the hospital. He just hopes it turns out better for her than it did for him.

“We’ll take breaks when we need to, and we won’t push ourselves too hard—wont push  _ you _ too hard. Freya’s right. This is the only way.” Arthur says.

If Daegal agrees, he doesn’t say it. But, that’s okay.

Arthur wasn’t really leaving any room for argument.

\---

They drive for another hour and Arthur sits on the edge of his seat, watching behind them to make sure that they’re not being followed again. Freya abandons the open road quite quickly, opting to take windy, rough paths covered by tall trees, whose leaves are so abundant they make the night sky look pitch black. It’s almost eerie.

A few cars trudge along behind them, but none emit that screeching sound, nor flash blue and red lights, so Arthur knows that they’re safe. Although, it doesn’t do anything to quell the uneasy energy of the car’s interior. They all wait, in fearful anticipation, to be caught, but never are.

They reach an incline in the road, going up, but before they can climb it, Freya chooses instead to diverge into an open path in the middle of the woods. She fits her car there quite easily and stops it. Her head whips around from left to right, presumably looking for a spot amongst the trees to hide the car.

“Over there,” Arthur says. “It’ll be tight, but we can hide it there and cover it with foliage.”

Freya nods and follows suit, repositioning the car into a tight spot between two trees, lining it up so they can open the doors and get out.

Without another word, Freya and Arthur slip into the night, gathering their things while Daegal waits to be collected. Once he is, they set him down on a wooden log, along with their bags.

“Arthur, start covering the car,” Freya says. Then, she conjures a tool from one of the bags—a strange instrument that is not dissimilar to a knife, only instead of a blade, the metal part is thick and rounded. She fiddles with the device by the front and back of the car, releasing the rectangular plates with letters and numbers on them.

Arthur has the car mostly covered with leaves, dirt, moss—really anything he could find and pull up easily—by the time she finishes. She instructs him to bury it and he does so.

“Ready?” Freya asks them, even though the question is mostly aimed at Daegal, who seems anxious and still a bit angry about the whole endeavor. Arthur doesn’t blame him—walking, even when being partially carried, will be difficult on his unaccustomed body. Either way, the boy doesn’t protest anymore, most likely understanding how dangerous the situation they’re in is.

So, they begin their journey.

\---

It takes longer then they expect to get to the cabin—approximately three days. It’s bitter work and they have to stop constantly. Arthur does his best to keep them alive and functioning. He makes fires at night, finds good places to hide for when they take breaks, and sets rudimentary traps using what he can find for food.

Really, he should feel like he’s back in his element. The woods are the closest he’s felt to home in a while and it makes sense to him—there’s very little new, very little to discover, and very little to confuse him.  

Only, it mostly just reminds him of his last days with Merlin, of walking and hoping and fighting for a cure. And while they did exceed, to some extent, the cost for Arthur was just too high. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

All of that effort and for what? Just for him to run, again?

He’s always running, always hiding. And it hasn’t stopped, for one second, since he’s been here.

No. Stop. He can’t keep thinking like this, not if he wants to survive. And he  _ will _ survive; he owes it to Merlin, to what Merlin went through for him.

It just hurts that something that feels like home can only bring up bad memories.

\---

The cabin Freya spoke of is a small little thing. It sits in the middle of a tiny clearing, surrounded by tall trees whose branches hover over its roof.

At first glance, some may say it looks unkempt. The construction is wonky, made up of uneven logs which only barely weave together to insulate the structure. Moss crawls up most of the exterior and leaves cover what seems to have originally been a clear pathway to the front door.

Despite this, it’s easily the most beautiful thing Arthur has seen since he’s woken up.

Everywhere he’s been so far has been made to be immaculate, with no room for inconsistency or dilapidation. Buildings now seem to be made to last, even though they do not. Which is fine, except for the fact that in their perfection, they seem to lack humanity. The hospital was perfectly designed, yet so cold and colorless that Arthur felt less and less like a person just living in it. And the “motel,” while worn down in a way that you could presumably guess it’s age, was dreary and unpleasant. Both buildings were meant for people to pass on by, never leaving a mark. And they were successful in that respect.

The cabin is different. Just from one look, Arthur can tell that many people have resided in this cabin and they have left many pieces of themselves behind as they passed along. That along with the ever-growing nature of the environment surrounding it, the log cabin stands as a living, breathing entity.

And Arthur loves it immediately.

They trudge along the littered pathway, the weight of the bags and a fatigued Daegal feeling heavier and heavier on their shoulders the closer they get to the door. As they step up to the porch, Arthur feels a flicker of something in his hand, a slight sting. He immediately writes it off as a tick, a reaction to carrying a heavy bag on his shoulder for too long—maybe he cut off a little bit of blood flow to his arm.

Freya pulls out the key to the cabin from under a flowerpot which holds no soil and they practically tumble into the place.

Aside from their time in the motel, none of them have gotten more than four hours of sleep at a time. And even though it would be wise to scope the place out, or have someone keep watch for any intruders, they immediately succumb to exhaustion and promptly pass out on the closest soft object they can find.

\---

Arthur awakes in the dead of the night to a piercing wail.

He shoots up in his spot on the floor, hand up and ready to attack. He must have fallen off of the sofa.

It takes him a few moments to make sense of the situation; no one has broken in and the wailing is coming from Freya, who, for all intents and purposes seems to still be sleeping.

He cautiously approaches her and shakes her shoulders. “Freya, wake up.”

She startles in his arms suddenly and the wailing cuts off quickly. For the briefest second, she seems fine, like she’s back to herself.

Then the wailing continues, and she begins thrashing about, trying to escape his hold.

Her eyes are filled with terror. “Let go of me!” she screams, and Arthur does as commanded.

Freya scrambles to the corner of the room, folding her body into a fetal position and rocking back and forth.

She screams and screams and screams, voice echoing her despair throughout the cabin.

Arthur tracks movement in the corner of his eye. Daegal is dragging himself along the ground towards her, carrying one of the strange containers that Arthur found in Freya’s bag earlier.

And a memory resurfaces for him, one from when he first arrived

_ He’s convulsing again, someone get me twenty milligrams of diazepam _

Diazepam, the calming medicine.

It’s not meant to be for him or Daegal.

It’s meant for Freya. But why?

Daegal rolls the bottle towards her, while still keeping a safe distance. She clamps her hand down on it and with shaky fingers removes the cap. She dry swallows a few of the pills, then tips over. The pills fall out of the bottle and scatter on the ground beside her, but she doesn’t seem to be concerned.

She’s falls back into the fetal position, closing her eyes. Tremors rack her body, and the wailing dies off eventually.  

“How long until it works?” Arthur asks Daegal. Freya flinches at his voice.

“Ten to twenty minutes,” Daegal whispers.

And so, they wait and watch until Freya falls back asleep.

\---

Arthur can’t sleep after that and neither does Daegal, not that they even tried to. They just sit there, watching Freya’s limp form, waiting for the sun to rise.

Honestly, Arthur would be hesitant to say that Freya is sleeping, either. Her eyes are closed and she’s laying down, but her breathing is heavy, and her limbs twitch every few seconds. Her face is slack, but not in the peaceful way most people look when they sleep.

Really, at least to Arthur, she looks more like she’s in a trance.

And maybe Arthur is, too. All he does in the following hours is stare at the wall before him and try to make sense of it all.

What  _ really _ did he just see?

He can’t make sense of it. He’s seen night terrors before—the knights often had them after a big battle and it really is difficult to ignore someone screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night. But, to some extent, they were always within reach. They could always be awoken, rescued from whatever dreams were tormenting them. And once they were, they’d take a deep breath and eventually calm down. Freya…was different. She didn’t even seem to recognize Arthur.

It was like she was possessed.

And the terror in her eyes. Well, he didn’t even know she was capable of that kind of fear.

Maybe that’s why she always looks so tired, too. If this is happening often, maybe she isn’t getting any sleep. It would explain the breakdowns, too.

The sun is already midway up in the sky when Freya wakes up. She shoots up off the floor with a start, inhaling deeply and desperately—like she was just being drowned.

She braces herself against the floor, cataloguing her surroundings while she tries to catch her breath.

She looks fearful, but not in the same way as before, so Arthur deems it safe to lower himself to the floor and approaching her slowly. “Freya,” he says cautiously. It comes out like a statement, but really it’s a question. Is she there? Is she ready to talk to him?

“Arthur,” she breathes, “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Arthur says truthfully.

“You had another freak—incident.” Daegal corrects himself at Arthur’s look.

Wait.  _ Another? _ And Daegal knew about this?

“What does that mean, ‘another?’ Has this happened before?” Arthur asks, frantically.

Daegal and Freya share a look, Daegal’s being one of annoyance, or insistence—Arthur can’t tell at this moment; he has more important things to focus on.

Arthur feels left out, again. As always.

Freya hesitantly shifts her gaze back to Arthur. “It happens once or twice a week, now.”

“Now? How long has this been going on?” Arthur asks.  

Freya and Daegal share another look. “Tell him, Freya,” Daegal says.

Tell him  _ what? _

And Arthur flashes back to something he half heard in between moments of sleep.

_ …you have to tell him. _ Arthur remembers Daegal saying it earlier.

“I have it under control,” Arthur mimics Freya’s answer. He catches her gaze again. “What do you have under control, Freya?”

“Arthur—”

“Because it’s obvious you  _ don’t _ —”

“Just listen—”

“And why does everyone  _ insist _ on hiding things from me?  _ Still _ ?” Arthur shouts, raising up on his knees. His chest puffs up defensively.

“Please, just h-hold on a second.” Freya leans forward to take Arthur’s hands in hers. “Just calm down and I’ll tell you, okay?”

Arthur feels a hand on his shoulder—Daegal—and tries to do as she commands. “What’s _going_ _on_?” he says sincerely.

“Like I said, this only happens once or twice a week. I wake up in the dead of night and I feel…this unbridled horror. A fear so strong that I feel like I’m going rabid and if anyone even  _ looks _ in my direction, I register it as a threat.” She pauses, taking in his expression before continuing. “Sometimes, I get angry, too. I just want to protect myself. I’m usually able to stop myself before I get violent, but it just gets worse and worse every time.”

“Why is it happening?” Arthur asks.

“I don’t know—I  _ honestly _ don’t know,” she assures him. “I just know that it only started a few weeks ago…”

“A few weeks ago?” Arthur asks, already seeing where this is going.

“…when you showed up at Mountainside General.”

Arthur doesn’t know what to do with that information. “What does that mean?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. All I know is that when it happens and every single time, when I close my eyes I see…”

“What?” Arthur shakes their entwined hands. “What do you see?”

“Glowing eyes, like yours. And a beast.”

And it all makes sense—the first time she saw his eyes glow, the fear, the hiding, the denial, when she left, when she returned, and maybe even why she helped him escape. It’s all been there the whole time and he didn’t see it.

One way or another, Freya has magic, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and for the comments and kudos on the previous chapter(s)! You can find me @arthurandhisswordbros on tumblr.


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